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PRESExNTED BY 



Italy's Problems 

and 

Achievements 



With an Introduction by 

WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



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Italy's Problems 



and 



Achievements 



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With an Introduction by 

WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



*$* 



COMPILED BY 

FERNANDO CUNIBERTI 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 
1918 



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CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction William Roscoe Thayer 1 

Address before the New York State Bar Association 

Count Macchi di Cellere 5 

Austria's Responsibility for the War . Charles Upson Clark 10 

Treachery against Italy During the Triple Alliance 

Arthur Bennington 14 

- - The Aspirations of Italy and the Rights of Civilization 

Arnaldo Agnelli 28 

Italy's Effort Paul Deschanel 44 

Italy's Claim to Istria Charles Upson Clark 46 

Putting Albania Back on the Map . . Amy A. Bernardy 52 

Dalmatia, Fiume and the other Unredeemed Lands of 

the Adriatic Idea Nazionale 61- 

Italy at the Piave Diana Watts 86 

Italy and the War Emilio Guglielmotti 95 

The Battle for Venice Walter Littlefield 100 

The Problems of Victory Medill McCormick 105 

Italy and the Real Villain . Will Irwin 108 



INTRODUCTION 

By William Roscoe Thayer 

The articles which follow ought to give American readers 
a much better idea than they now have, of the great service 
which Italy has rendered to the cause of civilization, dur- 
ing the present war. This is well, for Italy has been the 
most misjudged of all the Allies. From the beginning of 
the war, at the end of July, 1914, the world misunder- 
stood her position, and the Germans spread lies about it 
and calumniated her. The truth, known to a few then, 
ought to be clear to all now. 

Italy could not join the Allies, or go to war at all, because 
her recent campaign in Africa had exhausted her muni- 
tions and supplies, and made it necessary to remodel and 
equip her army. This work required eight months. But, 
at the very start, she gave immediate help to the utmost 
of her power by informing the French Government that 
she would not fight on the side of the Teutons. This was 
of immense military service, because it released the French 
army corps watching the Italian frontier, and the moral 
service was, and is, and will be, of prime importance — 
because it meant that Italy, knowing much of the secret 
intrigues preceding the outbreak of hostilities, declared 
that the Germans were bent on a war of conquest and 
aggression. 

Italy, it must be remembered, had been for thirty-two 
years a partner of Germany and Austria in the Triple 
Alliance, and when she refused to join their piratical cam- 
paign, they charged her with backsliding and treachery. 
Article VII, of the Triple Alliance pact, however, distinctly 
stated that the partners should aid each other only in 
case they were attacked; no aggression against foreign 
nations was contemplated by them. With this clause 
standing within everyone's knowledge, we wonder why 



the Germans took the trouble to lie about it; the only- 
answer to this question is that lying is the natural expres- 
sion of the German spirit. 

During the winter of 1914-15, Italy prepared for war. 
She was also beset by German and other emissaries who 
urged her to declare for the Allies, or for the Entente, or to 
remain neutral. The Germans sent their most efficient 
pander, Prince Biilow, who alternately tempted and 
threatened. He even offered to hand over the Trentine 
and Trieste, with or without Austria's consent, if Italy 
would keep out of the war. She had, meanwhile, great 
internal difficulties. The Socialists, there as elsewhere, 
were secretly Pro-German; the Papalists and some of the 
high nobility were likewise pro-German; the new Pope, 
Benedict XV, was believed to side with the Teutons, and 
neither his actions nor his public messages dispelled this 
suspicion. The emperors of Germany and Austria had 
promised him, it was said, to restore the Temporal Power 
of the Popes, and this matter was publically discussed 
and approved in the Bavarian Diet. A large part of the 
Italian populace was lukewarm; it saw no profit in entering 
the war; neither did many of the deputies and politicians, 
who had been for years manipulated by Giolitti, the most 
wily politician United Italy had ever had, and one who was 
supposed to be, politically and personally, in the favor of 
the Germans. 

But there was a saving remnant which represented the 
intelligence and conscience of Italy, and this remnant 
gradually led the country to perceive that, in a war between 
barbarism and civilization, Italy must do her duty and 
fight the barbarians. So she broke with Austria on May 
24, 1915. Then began her active, military assistance. 
Her campaigns for two years in the Alps, and along the 
Isonzo, were among the marvels of military ingenuity, 
fortitude, and heroism. In 1916 she declared war on 
Germany also, having been obliged to delay so long because 
the Germans had "peacefully penetrated" northern Italy 
to such an extent that they controlled most of its industries 
and commerce. 



Italy's cooperation with the Allies kept a considerable 
portion of the Austrian army busy. It was also of great 
value to the French and English in the Mediterranean. 
Had Italy gone with the Teutons, her fleet might have 
menaced Marseilles and other French ports, and her sub- 
marines would have done great damage to the English 
and French transports. Her own southern harbors 
would have sheltered the Teutonic submarines and cruisers. 

I do not expatiate on the splendid endurance of the 
Italians during the war. The civil population saw their 
food diminish and their fuel disappear, but, like the soldiers, 
they bore the privations and the losses without complaint. 
The Italians have always been a long-suffering people. 
In this war, what troubled the soldiers more than their 
own hunger was the thought that their wives and children, 
at home, were unprovided for; and the reptilian agents of 
the Kaiser played upon their anxiety. Many elements 
contributed to the disaster at Caporette, on October 27, 
1917 — war weariness, the Pope's peace message, the sedi- 
tious enticements of the Socialists, the open intrigues of 
German spies, the treachery of a few officers, the growing 
belief among the army that the United States and the 
Allies had abandoned Italy to her fate. To me, the won- 
der is, not that the disaster came, but that the fugitive 
Italian army corps had strength and courage to stop at 
the Piave, to turn on their pursuers, and to hold there 
until they could make further pursuit impossible. 

During the winter and spring of 1918, the Italian army, 
stiffened by several corps of French and English troops, 
prepared to repel the expected onslaught of the Austrians. 
This came in June, and the Italians drove the enemy back, 
saved Venice from danger, and stood ready to advance to 
their former frontiers when Marshal Foch should give the 
word. This is a splendid example of recovery by a nation 
which had been beaten. 

Italy, we must remember, lacks both coal and iron, the 
two staples on which our modern industrial civilization 
and our modern warfare depend. We must remember, 
also, that she has been, in spite of her hard-working popu- 

3 



lation, a poor country. Now she has redeemed herself 
and proved her right to stand among the Great Powers. 
Like the United States she entered the war on the side of 
the Allies, of her own free will. It would have been as 
hideous if she, the nation which was built by Mazzini and 
Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Cavour, had denied her 
birthright and the ideals of her great founders, had joined 
the Huns, as if this mightiest of all republics, ark of 
liberty, had foresworn its conscience and fought under the 
black and red pirate flag of despotism. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE BAR 
ASSOCIATION, JANUARY 12, 1918 

By His Excellency, Count Macchi Di Cellere 
Italian Ambassador to the United States 

Sir Frederick Smith, the Attorney General of Great 
Britain, in his brilliant words to you last night discussed the 
problems that will confront us at the close of this great war. 
This afternoon at the Lawyers' Club he was gracious 
enough to speak briefly and clearly of one or two of the 
features which have marked the place which my nation has 
taken in the struggle. For this exposition by him of our 
stand and for his clear statement of the appreciation that 
his great nation has of the value of Italy's contribution to 
the Allied Cause, I thank him. 

We are all joint partners in this great fight against the 
forces of armed brutality. It is of the highest importance 
that we should all appreciate to the full the unselfishness 
and purity of purpose of each of our associates. The mag- 
nificent and unselfish stand which the United States has 
taken for the preservation of democracy by its entry into 
war is fully realized by my nation. And it is with the hope 
that I may make clear and distinct to you the unselfishness 
and purity of purpose of Italy that I undertake in a few 
words to recall to you her situation. Italy's position in 
this war has been perverted into one of faithlessness 
by a clever propaganda of our common enemy; but, 
fortunately your great President and you and others of the 
people of the United States have come to recognize that 
this accusation is hideously false. This German propa- 
ganda has centered around two points: That we were 



traitors to the Triple Alliance; that we entered the war only 
for selfish ends. How far from justified are these two 
accusations, with all the consequences that follow them, 
you know. I will, however, discuss them from the Italian 
point of view. I could easily disregard the accusation of 
treason made by our enemies against us. The word 
treason is unknown to Italy in principle and in fact, and 
only Teutonic mentality could apply it to us. Italy did 
not betray her former allies. She was brutally and 
repeatedly betrayed by them. One needs merely to con- 
sider the spirit and the wording of the treaty of the Triple 
Alliance to be at once convinced of the truth of my state- 
ment. Italy joined the Austro-German combination at a 
period when her national existence had hardly begun. 
Unable to withstand the dangers of isolation, Italy became 
a party to the treaty, but stipulated that the Alliance 
should be purely defensive and that no step whatever 
should be taken by any of the signatories without previous 
consultation with the others. Italy kept her word to the 
last. How the Teutonic powers kept theirs is demon- 
strated by their sending their ultimatum to Serbia without 
even letting Italy know that they were contemplating such 
a tremendous step. They kept Italy in the dark because 
they knew by experience that Italy would oppose their 
plans of aggression against Serbia or any other nation, and 
they realized that if their plans had been known in time the 
war they wanted to provoke and did provoke would not 
have been possible. Italy had stood by Serbia when, 
after Austria's annexation of the Serbian provinces of 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Central Powers were preparing 
new aggressions in the Balkans and were looking for pre- 
texts which Italy's attitude always forestalled. Knowing 
that Italy would never consent to their criminal plans, 
Germany and Austria prepared in secret. When they 
considered themselves ready, they broke the peace of the 
world. What Italy's attitude would have been if she had 
known what the Central Powers were preparing is demon- 
strated by the efforts she made with her noble and tradi- 

6 



tional friend England to prevent a war which everybody 
knew would be the ruin of Europe and would involve 
the whole of the world. Our efforts were as vain as were 
those of England, because the crimes which the Central 
Powers were plotting against humanity and civilization 
had been determined upon. Italy was betrayed by her 
former allies in 1908, when Austria with the knowledge 
and open support of Germany annexed Bosnia-Herze- 
govina; she was betrayed again during her war with 
Turkey in 1912, when Austria threatened instant war if 
Italy should attack Turkey at Prevesa, and when Germany 
sent her officers and men to lead the Turks and the Arabs 
against the Italian soldiers ; she was betrayed once more in 
1914, when Germany and Austria struck without consult- 
ing her. Italy did the only thing she could possibly do 
at the time — she refused to join them, and at once declared 
her neutrality. 

The history of Italy, even in its darkest periods, abounds 
in instances of nobility and greatness. The Italian nation 
could not have become a party to a crime against humanity 
— a crime so cunningly premeditated that the most 
repulsive crimes of all suffer in comparison. 

The Teutonic assault on Serbia had released Italy from 
any obligation under the Triple Alliance — an assault which 
was only the consummation of a series of crimes all pre- 
paratory to the same end, and committed in full view of the 
civilized world, which nevertheless could not be brought to 
realize what was about to happen. 

We are all paying dearly now for our blind faith that no 
nation would dare to break a peace which the world had 
expended so much to secure. 

Let me say, gentlemen, that in the bloody sacrifices 
civilization is making to overthrow barbarism once for all, 
Italy is second to none. 

But then (to take up the second point of my argument 
against the subtle Teutonic propaganda) why did Italy 
merely declare her neutrality instead of immediately taking 
up arms and joining the Entente in August, 1914 ? All who 
follow the course of international affairs appreciate the fact 



that in 1914 Italy was just emerging from a war with 
Turkey, in which she had suffered atrociously as a result of 
Turkish cruelty and Austro-German treason. 

I have already referred to the episode of Prevesa and the 
fact established by official documents that German officers 
and men took part on the Turkish side in the Italo-Turkish 
war. Our military stores were exhausted, our artillery was 
reduced to nothing, our armies had been largely disbanded, 
and only a very small number of them remained under 
arms. The result to the Allies of an immediate Italian par- 
ticipation in the war, under these conditions, is easily seen. 
Italy would have been overrun at once, put out of business 
altogether, and lost to the cause of the Allies probably 
forever — certainly for the duration of this war. 

However, the mere declaration of neutrality was, in 
itself, a proof that Italy had made her decision — she would 
not be on the side of the aggressors. But it meant far 
more; it meant that heroic France, reassured about our 
attitude, could, as she did, immediately withdraw all of 
her soldiers from the Italian frontier and send them to 
immortalize themselves at the Marne. Thus Italy, by 
making possible the victorious defense of Paris, contrib- 
uted in saving the war for the Allies. 

The Central Powers understood what Italian neutrality 
meant, and began a work of corruption and intrigue which 
did not however, alter the course of events. Italy had not 
been ready when the voice of history called her to be true 
to her immemorial traditions of love for liberty and justice; 
but she prepared with all speed to make her participation 
in the war of material advantage. You all know of what 
technical importance has been Italy's contribution to the 
war, in the perfecting of trench, mountain and heavy 
artillery, in the wonderful evolution of the aeroplane, in 
the development of warfare among the clouds. 

But let me recall to your minds the immediate practical 
effects of Italy's entrance into the struggle. 

Russia was being rapidly driven back, apparently with- 
out any hope of recovering from the hammering blows of 
the Austro-German forces. Only a diversion, and a power- 

8 



ful one, could prevent a crushing disaster to the Allies. 
Italy undertook the task of creating such a diversion. She 
declared war on Austria, crossed old iniquitous boundaries 
imposed upon her by Austria and Germany in 1866, and 
forced the instant transfer of all available Austrian forces 
from the Eastern theatre of the war to the Italian front. 
Italy had created the necessary diversion and Russia was 
saved for her victories of a few months later. 

For two and a half years Austria had been kept on the 
verge of disaster by the bravery of a country that has been 
paying for her lack of artillery, ammunition, fuel and food 
with the purest blood of her sons. 

Then last October, owing to a combination of circum- 
stances now known to all, Teutonic trickery and violence 
got the better of us. Our country was invaded, our army 
brought near destruction, our monuments razed with bar- 
baric thoroughness, our women and children martyred. 
For the moment it seemed that we were lost, not only to 
the cause of the Allies, but even to our own traditions. 
Thank God that impression proved false! Never was Italy 
so great as the day she realized her danger and transformed 
what appeared to be one of the greatest defeats known in 
military annals into a victorious rally of all her forces 
against the invader. The day will come when we shall 
hear the name of the Piave mentioned in the same breath 
with that of the Marne, thus uniting in a halo of glory the 
two greatest episodes in the history of those nations which 
are shedding their blood in the cause of true civilization. 
Of this we are assured by the miraculous revival of the 
fighting spirit of our soldiers and by the evidence that our 
country is fully aware of the part history has called upon 
her to play for the triumph of those principles of justice 
which the world originally learned from Italy. 

With this faith in our destiny, with the assurance that 
right cannot be permanently destroyed by might, with the 
confidence and gratitude that the entrance of this glorious 
republic in the war on our side has added her sense of right 
and her unlimited strength, we face the future bravely, 
certain that victory will be ours. 

9 



AUSTRIA'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 

By Prof. Charles Upson Clark 
Of the American Academy in Rome 

We are apt to forget two fundamental facts with re- 
gard to the present conflict: First, that it is a Balkan 
war to settle Serbia's status, and second, that Austria 
precipitated it. In our indignation at Germany's con- 
duct of the war, we neglect to bear in mind Austria's 
maneuvers during the past decade; and as several of 
them seem not to be well known in this country, I shall re- 
hearse them, taking full advantage of the interesting 
recollections of Senator Tittoni, 1 the former Italian 
Foreign Secretary, and later Ambassador at Paris. 

This war is a sequel of Austria's seizure, in 1908, of the 
former Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
which she had been administering under the treaty of 
Berlin (1878). This action was a warning to Serbia, if 
one was needed, that Austria was seeking expansion in 
that direction, but consternation at Austria's cynical 
infraction of the Treaty of Berlin was almost as great at 
Rome. Under article VII of the Triple Alliance, if either 
Austria or Italy obtained further territorial aggrandize- 
ment in the Balkans, the other country had a right to 
compensation. The Italian Foreign Office was very anxi- 
ous to avoid a controversy with Austria, but felt that 
Italy's rights must be safeguarded, and that various 
clauses in the Treaty of Berlin should be revised. Eng- 
land was worried over Austria's mobilization against 
Serbia, and in February, 1909, Sir Charles Hardings and 
Minister Tittoni sounded Berlin with regard to a confer- 

X I1 Giudizio della Storia sulla responsabilita' della guerra. Sena- 
tore Tommaso Tittoni — Milan — Treves. 

10 



enee. Germany replied that she was prepared to support 
Austria in any step Austria might take. Thereupon 
Minister Tittoni proposed to England and Russia an inter- 
national conference, which should sanction the treaty 
between Austria and Turkey in reference to Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, should recognize Bulgaria's independence of 
the Porte, and should discuss certain clauses of the 
Treaty of Berlin. When news of this proposed confer- 
ence leaked out, it was saluted with joy even by the 
Lokal-Anzeiger and Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of 
Berlin, the Reichspost, Vaterland and Zeit of Vienna, and 
the Pester Lloyd of Buda-Pesth; and Europe, in general, 
breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, on March 15, 1909, 
the German Chancellor and Foreign Secretary notified 
Minister Tittoni that, while not speaking officially, they 
were personally well disposed towards the proposed con- 
ference, and France and Russia were heartily in favor of 
it. Suddenly, without a word of warning, Berlin notified 
St. Petersburg that Russia must immediately recognize 
Austria's annexation of these Turkish provinces, without 
waiting for any conference, otherwise war should be de- 
clared. It was a bitter humiliation for the Russian 
government; Russia was official protector of the Balkan 
Slavs and her prestige was deeply involved. But Russia, 
as Germany well understood, was not ready for war, and 
had to swallow the affront; on March 23, she notified 
Germany that she acknowledged Austria's annexation of 
Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

Having succeeded in her brutal bluff with Russia, Ger- 
many decided that Italy's turn came next. On March 
25, Minister Tittoni had just entered the Foreign Office 
and was at the window enjoying the early sunlight on 
the marble group before the Quirinal and the Dome of 
St. Peter's through the luminous morning mist, when the 
German Ambassador was announced. He gravely noti- 
fied Minister Tittoni that he had come to make a state- 
ment of the utmost importance. His government had 
charged him to demand from Italy the immediate recog- 

11 



nition of Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
In vain did Minister Tittoni protest that a conference 
would shortly decide the question. Baron Monts re- 
plied that a conference was now unnecessary since Russia 
had already recognized the legality of Austria's action. 
To this Minister Tittoni objected that he had received no 
word from Russia and that in any case he had formally 
declared in the Italian Chamber that Italy could sanction 
Austria's action only if it were accompanied by certain 
modifications in the Treaty of Berlin. Thereupon 
Baron Monts asked the fateful question: "Is that your 
last word?" Minister Tittoni, fully realizing that he was 
pledging Italy to stand by Serbia even to the point of war 
with Germany, had just replied that it was his last word, 
when Count Lutzow, the Austrian Ambassador, was 
shown in. He was more conciliatory, and at once ad- 
mitted that article XXIX of the Treaty of Berlin should 
be modified; negotiations to that end were initiated; and 
Germany rested satisfied with her humiliation of Russia. 

It would be instructive to compare this action of Ger- 
many's with that in the Agadir affair, but it is more 
germane to our present purpose to follow Minister Tit- 
toni in remarking the extraordinary similarity to her 
procedure in July, 1914. Again the Powers had nearly 
succeeded in calling an international conference to pre- 
vent the spread of the Balkan war w x hich Austria had 
brought on; again it was Germany which made a sudden, 
humiliating demand upon Russia. This demand is 
generally interpreted as merely a pretext trumped up by 
Germany for the general war which she had decided on. 
But it has just been pointed out by the Serbian General 
Vesnitch (see New York Times of January 1, 1918) that 
Count Portales had notified his home government at 
Berlin from St. Petersburg that revolution would break 
out in Russia, should the Russian army be mobilized; 
and theie is another curious fact, noted at the time but 
since forgotten, which indicates that in 1914 also, Ger- 
many expected that her threat would suffice, and that 

12 



she might again be acknowledged mistress of European 
politics, while biding her time for the great reckoning 
which most careful students of European affairs expected 
in 1916 or 1917. When Count Portales came to send 
the official note declaring war to the Russian Foreign 
Office, he sent, instead, the note which had previously 
been drawn up, expressing Germany's satisfaction at 
Russia's acceptance of her suggestions, and the mistake 
passed unnoticed for some hours. But Russia's resolu- 
tion to brook no further humiliation at the hands of 
Germany and Austria made the Central Powers begin 
the conflict earlier than they had previously intended — 
particularly as internal politics in France and England 
seemed to make the moment a favorable one. 

Let another instance or two bring out Austria's primary 
responsibility for this Balkan war. In November, 1912, 
Austria asked Italy to recognize Serbia's new status after 
the second Balkan war, but only on this condition, that 
Austria should be allowed to exact from Serbia certain 
guarantees. As always, Italy again showed herself 
Serbia's best friend (for it will be remembered that the 
policy of France in the Balkans has been phil-Hellene, 
and England broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia 
for some years) and answered that these guarantees must 
not compromise Serbia's independence, and must not be 
to the sole advantage of Austria. Austria made no reply, 
having evidently resolved on war, as will be shown later. 
On April 30, 1913, Tittoni (now Ambassador at Paris) 
received a telegram from his successor in the Italian 
Foreign Office, the Marquis di San Giuliano, to the effect 
that Austria had notified Italy that she was about to 
proceed against Montenegro. Tittoni telegraphed back 
to let Austria understand that if she occupied Monte- 
negro, Italy, under article VII of the Triple Alliance, 
would proceed to the immediate occupation of the 
Albanian ports of Durazzo and Vallona. Foiled again, 
Austria notified Italy in the summer of 1913 that she 
desired her aid in a war against Serbia; Italy answered 

18 



that the Triple Alliance was a defensive and not an offen- 
sive combination, and that she must deplore any such 
action on Austria's part. So Austria postponed this 
long-cherished dream of gobbling up Serbia as she had 
Bosnia, until the summer of 1914 gave her so good a 
pretext. But this time she did not take Italy into her 
confidence. 

I hope these items — Austria's illegal annexation of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, followed by Germany's 
application of brute force at St. Petersburg in 1909; 
Austria's endeavor in 1912 to humble Serbia after Serbia's 
successes in the second Balkan war; her plan in 1913 to 
annex Montenegro, and her announced intention of 
declaring war against Serbia one year before she finally 
did — are enough to show Austria's prime responsibility 
for the conflagration. It is well for us in America to 
understand not only this, but also that if the Austrian 
Empire survives this war, it will continue to be a dis- 
turber of the peace in the Balkans. The discussion of 
this, however, in the present connection, would lead us 
too far afield, as would also the outrageous treatment of 
Italy by her partners in the Triple Alliance during Italy's 
recent war with Turkey. Suffice it to say that no broad 
view of the European situation, particularly when peace 
negotiations c r me to be discussed, should leave out of 
account the infinite possibilities of the Austrian Empire 
as an anachronism and trouble maker, not only in the 
all too recent past, but in the grim and shadowy future 
which Austria's misdeeds have created for us. 



14 



TREACHERY AGAINST ITALY DURING THE 
TRIPLE ALLIANCE* 

By Arthur Bennington 

When the secret archives of the European chancelleries 
shall be opened and their contents studied by future 
historians, one of the darkest pages in the annals of diplo- 
macy will be found in the true record of the Triple Alliance. 
Not until then can the full measure of German and Aus- 
trian perfidy and treachery be taken. Since Italy finally 
broke with her allies of thirty-four years, statesmen whose 
lips had heretofore been sealed have revealed a few of the 
black secrets that had been hidden behind the veil. Some 
of these secrets have found their way piecemeal into the 
columns of the press; not many, it is true, but enough to 
make thinking men amazed at the long-suffering meekness 
with which Italy kept turning the other cheek after her 
allies had smitten her over and over again. 

In the last few months it has been the writer's privilege 
to have a peep behind the scenes of the Triple Alliance. I 
have been placed in possession of some hitherto unrevealed 
incidents of diplomatic history; one or two statesmen whose 
authority is beyond question have related them to me and 
given me permission to make some of them public. What 
follows is a brief resume of facts of treachery on the part 
of Germany and Austria in their relations with their ally. 
Some of them have been told before and are retold today 
with those revealed for the first time, merely to make as 
complete as possible the astounding record of Teutonic 
perfidy. 

First of all, a very brief summary of the facts of the 
Triple Alliance. 

♦Reprinted from the New York World, September 23, 1917. 

15 



HOW THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE WAS MADE 

Italy was virtually forced into the Triple Alliance. In 
1882, when the treaty was made, she was faced with many 
troubles, at home and abroad. France had just taken 
Tunisia, to which Italy had long aspired, being encouraged 
in her aspirations by Bismarck, who wanted to weaken 
France in the Mediterranean. Her relations with France 
had been embittered by a massacre of Italian workmen at 
Marseilles. Bismarck was threatening to interfere in 
Italy's relations with the Papacy, and his newspaper 
organs were busy urging that Germany step in and 
restore Rome to the Pope. He was also plotting to strain 
still further the already tense relations between Italy and 
France. Italy's army and navy were so small and 
inefficient that she dared not risk a rupture with France. 
Therefore, her statesmen were glad to accept the alliance 
with Germany and with their hereditary enemy Austria, 
for they wanted peace above everything else at that 
moment. 

Germany's object in admitting a then so insignificant 
nation as Italy to an alliance was to offset the growing 
power of France in the Mediterranean and at the same time 
to curb Italy's hostility to Austria. This hostility mani- 
fested itself in a determination to add to the newly united 
Italy the Italian provinces that still remained under 
Austrian rule. It was especially Trieste, Istria and Dal- 
matia that Germany feared might be lost to Austria, thus 
depriving the Germanic powers of t leir one outlet to the 
Mediterranean. They figured that with Italy their ally 
she must give up her aspirations for the acquisition of these 
provinces on the Adriatic. 

WHY ITALY REPEATEDLY RENEWED IT 

The Italian people never loved the Triple Alliance, and 
though this was renewed in 1887, again in 1891 and again 
in 1902, its hold upon Italy became weaker and weaker as 
Italians saw how their allies disregarded it whenever it 
suited their purpose. The successive renewals of the 

16 



alliance on Italy's part were due solely to her desire to 
preserve the peace of Europe, for it is very difficult to 
discover any single benefit that Italy has ever derived 
from it. The world has often wondered why, in view of 
the repeated treachery of her allies, Italy kept on renew- 
ing the treaty of the Triple Alliance. To explain this 
mystery I cannot do better than quote some words from a 
speech made in Paris on June 22, 1916, by Signor Tittoni, 
who had been one of the most ardent supporters of the 
Triple Alliance throughout his long career: 

"We were with Austria for peace, for the equilibrium of 
the Adriatic, to guarantee the independence and integrity 
of the Balkan states, and we remained faithful to her up 
to the moment that she, by abandoning that programme, 
constrained us to seek elsewhere for its effectual operation. 
Those of us who for many long years have loyally sup- 
ported Italy's alliance with Austria, serving the cause of 
our country and of the peace of Europe, do not go back 
on our past; on the contrary, we reaffirm it loudly because 
that past in no way contradicts our present attitude, but 
is rather its efficacious justification. It is not Italy that 
betrayed the alliance. Austria betrayed it when she 
betrayed the cause of right, of justice and of peace." 

It was in 1884, only two years after the Treaty of the 
Triple Alliance was signed, that Germany and Austria 
first violated its provisions, ignored their ally and made a 
secret treaty with Russia. One of the several reasons why 
Italy had allied herself with Germany and Austria was the 
desire to protect herself against Russian and Austrian 
aggression in the Balkans. By this bit of Machiavellian 
diplomacy Bismarck won the promise of Russia and 
Austria to maintain "benevolent neutrality" in the event 
of Germany becoming involved in war with France, in 
return for which he pledged himself to further the ambi- 
tions of Austria and Russia by "honest brokerage" in the 
Balkans. 

The secret alliance with Russia made Italy a negligible 
quantity in the eyes of Bismarck and of the Austrian 
statesmen who danced when he pulled the strings. 

17 



THE DOUBLE CROSS FOR ITALT 

In 1892, a year after the second renewal of the Triple 
Alliance, the commercial treaties which Italy had with 
Germany and Austria expired. These were separate and 
distinct treaties in no way depending upon the Triple 
Alliance. They were not even concurrent and the terms 
were different, each covering special relations between 
Italy and the country to which it applied. Negotiations 
for the renewal of these treaties went on for several 
months; the terms of the treaty with Germany were settled 
without any difficulty; Austria, on the other hand, raised 
objection after objection to the terms proposed to her by 
Italy, endeavoring to wring from her ally commercial 
concessions of a most onerous nature. The Marquis di 
Rudini, then Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs, anxious to 
get the treaties arranged, made some concessions, but a 
point was finally reached beyond which he could not yield. 
Vienna continued to hold out for terms that Rudini 
regarded as oppressive and to reject the reasonable treaty 
that he had submitted. 

In the meantime, although the terms of the treaty with 
Germany had long since been agreed upon, Germany's 
signature ratifying the treaty was not forthcoming. 

Rudini was pressing Germany to sign and pressing 
Austria to come to reasonable terms, when he received a 
despatch from the Italian Ambassador in Berlin informing 
him that the German Government had intimated to him 
that Germany would not ratify her commercial treaty 
until Italy should agree to Austria's terms, Germany and 
Austria having a secret agreement to that effect. 

Thus were Italy's allies trying to squeeze her between 
the upper and the nether millstones and force her to agree 
to conditions that would put her commercially at their 
mercy. 

CHECKMATE WITH A DOUBLE ULTIMATUM 

But the Marquis di Rudini was a more astute statesman 
than either Berlin or Vienna gave him credit for being. 

18 



This is how he checkmated the "double cross" that had 
been planned for Italy by her allies: 

He sent for the German and Austrian Ambassadors. 
The former, General Solms, was the first to arrive. The 
Marquis received him standing and did not ask him to take 
a seat. Putting his monocle into his left eye, the Italian 
Minister addressed the German Ambassador about as 
follows : 

"Your Excellency, the delay in ratifying these commer- 
cial treaties ii a species of blackmail on the part of the 
government that you represent. I now have the honor 
to inform you that if the pending treaty be not signed 
within twenty-four hours I shall tear up the Triple 
Alliance and announce my reasons to the rest of the world." 

A few minutes later the Austrian Ambassador arrived, 
and the Marquis di Rudini treated him in precisely the 
same manner, saying: 

"Your Excellency, I wish to repeat to you the words I 
addressed a few minutes ago to your German colleague, and 
to add that they apply precisely to the treaty now pending 
between the Government of Italy and that of His Majesty 
the Emperor of Austria." 

Two astonished and crestfallen ambassadors left the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and rushed to their respective 
embassies, whence the telegraph wires to Berlin and Vienna 
soon began to sizzle. 

Before the twenty-four-hour limit had expired both 
Berlin and Vienna signed the treaties. 

And Germany and Austria were Italy's allies! 

It was round about 1904 that Austria began the 
elaborate fortification of the lofty mountain peaks that 
overlook Italy. It must be remembered that the frontier 
between Austria and Italy runs along the base of these 
mountains, they and almost all of the foothills being on 
the Austrian side of the line. In 1905 the Austrian Army 
held its grand manoeuvres, at which the Emperor was 
present, precisely in these mountains along the Italian 
frontier. In this there was, of course, no breach of the 

19 



Triple Alliance, but was the kind of menace that one ally 
does not expect from another. 

MOST FLAGRANT OF BETRAYALS 

The most flagrant of all the betrayals of Italy was the 
seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria in October, 
1908. How flagrant this was can best be understood by 
reading Article VII of the Triple Alliance. This runs as 
follows : 

"Austria-Hungary and Italy, who have solely in view 
the maintenance, as far as possible, of the territorial status 
quo in the east, engage themselves to prevent all territorial 
changes which might be disadvantageous to the one or 
the other of the powers signatory of the present treaty. 
To this end they will give reciprocally all information 
calculated to enlighten each other concerning their own 
intentions and those of other powers. Should, however, 
the case arise that in the course of events the maintenance 
of the status quo in the territory of the Balkans or of the 
Ottoman coast and islands in the Adriatic or Aegean Seas 
becomes impossible, and that, either in consequence of 
the action of a third power or for any other reason, 
Austria-Hungary or Italy should be obliged to change the 
status quo for their part by a temporary or permanent 
occupation, such occupation would only take place after 
previous agreement between the two powers, which would 
be based upon the principle of a reciprocal compensation 
for all territorial or other advantages that either of them 
might acquire over and above the existing status quo, and 
would have to satisfy the interests and rightful claims of 
both parties." 

ITALY KEPT IN THE DARK 

Austria gave her ally no information as to her intention 
to seize Bosnia and Herzegovina. Italy learned of it only 
when Emperor Francis Joseph, in autograph letters to the 
rulers of Europe, formally announced the annexation. 
Of all the powers, Russia was the only one to protest, but 

20 



an open threat of war from Germany silenced even this, 
for Russia was not yet convalescent from the war with 
Japan. Italy was in no condition to protest, for she was 
not prepared to back up a protest with force, especially 
as this would have meant fighting Germany as well as 
Austria. 

No "compensations" were offered to Italy, Turkey 
being the only nation to which a sop was thrown. To keep 
Turkey quiet, Austria withdrew her troops from the Sanjak 
of Novibazar. Austria would not even discuss the matter 
with Italy, though Italy was Austria's ally. 

In spite of the terms of the clause just quoted, Austria 
persistently fomented troubles in the Balkans and con- 
trived to obtain whatever she wanted there without con- 
sulting Italy or offering any compensations. Thus the 
Kingdom of Albania was set up and a sovereign selected 
by Austria imposed upon it; thus was Montenegro com- 
pelled to give up Scutari and Serbia to renounce an outlet 
upon the Adriatic; thus was the frontier between Serbia 
and Greece laid out as Austria desired. 

AUSTRIA PLANS TO INVADE ITALY 

Two months after this seizure of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina, just when the Messina earthquake had plunged 
all Italy into mourning, Gen. Conrad von Hoetzendorff, 
Chief of Staff of the Austrian Army, proposed what he 
called " a military promenade " to Venice and Milan. The 
Crown Prince and his powerful entourage supported this 
plan for the invasion and reconquest of Venetia and Lom- 
bardy in Italy's hour of distress. The project was 
seriously discussed by the Imperial Cabinet and the 
General Staff; it was openly urged in the columns of the 
Armee Zeitung and other semi-official Austrian news- 
papers. It would probably have been adopted had it not 
been for the indignant opposition of Count von Aerenthal, 
Chancellor of the empire, who absolutely refused to 
countenance such a wanton and unprovoked attack upon 
Austria's ally. 

21 



Gen. Conrad von Hoetzendorff was forced to resign, but 
lie had the active support of the Crown Prince Francis 
Ferdinand, and the latter had the backing of the German 
Emperor in the bitter campaign that began at once against 
Count von Aerenthal. Francis Ferdinand was always 
savagely anti-Italian in his sentiments, and never took 
any pains to conceal the fact. 

And Austria was Italy's ally ! 

Italy's seizure of Tripoli and Cyrenaica in 1911 was 
forced upon her by Germany's evident preparation to take 
them. This territory had long been conceded as Italy's 
rightful heritage, and the matter had been discussed openly 
for several years with the leading statesmen of Europe. 
But Italy discovered that Germany was getting important 
concessions from Turkey for operations in those countries 
and was making vast investments there. At the same 
time, all Italian enterprise was being frustrated by German 
machinations. Italy awoke to the fact that with the eastern 
shores of the Adriatic Austrian, and the northern coasts 
of Africa German, Italy would be merely a peninsula 
sticking out into a German lake, and that this geographical 
possibility was imminent. 

STABBING ITALY IN THE BACK 

It was a case of taking this territory now or never. The 
famous visit of the German cruiser Panther to Agadir and 
the events that followed it opened Italy's eyes to the 
designs of her ally and aroused such popular indignation 
that even Giolitti, the pro-German Premier, was forced 
to act. And when Italy seized Tripoli, the chorus of 
protest that rose against her was led from Berlin. 

Germany, Italy's ally, did her best to make the conquest 
of those Turkish provinces impossible. There is on file in 
the archives of the Foreign Office in Paris a despatch from 
Jules Cambon, then French Ambassador in Berlin, bearing 
date in the spring or early summer of 1912 — a despatch so 
sensational that it has never yet been made public. 

I cannot quote the text of the message, for this has been 
seen by very few persons — probably not more than twenty 

22 



in all. But it recounts an incident that would have 
"created a profound impression," as the diplomats say, 
had its contents been known in Rome at that time. 

It was just before the close of the war between Italy and 
Turkey. At this time Turkey was helpless, ready to give 
up and allow Italy to take Tripoli and Cyrenaica, the last 
of Turkey's African possessions. 

Ambassador Cambon's despatch related that during a 
conference that morning between him and the German 
Emoeror at Potsdam, an aide-de-camp sent word to the 
Emperor that the Turkish Ambassador was there, request- 
ing an audience. The Kaiser directed that the caller be 
shown in at once, and remarked to Ambassador Cambon 
that this was just the man he wanted to see. M. Cambon 
asked if he should retire. The Emperor said no. The 
Turk was shown into the room where the French Ambas- 
sador still sat. The Emperor rushed to meet the caller, 
shook a quivering finger before his face, and cried: 

"I am ashamed of you! I am ashamed of Turkey! 
We believed that you could beat the Italians; had we not 
thought so we should not have backed you. Now we see 
we put our money on the wrong horse!" 

There was more to the same effect, and the poor Turkish 
Ambassador stood there vainly trying to excuse his country 
for having obtained Germany's backing and then been 
defeated by Italy, but the Emperor was very excited and 
indignant and the Turk had not much opportunity to talk. 

THOUGHT THE KAISER WAS MAD 

This was intensely interesting to the French Ambas- 
sador, who took no part in the conversation, but made a 
mental note of every word spoken by Italy's august ally 
to the Ambassador of Italy's enemy. And when he left 
the place, M. Cambon lost no time in telegraphing a 
detailed account of the conversation to which he had 
virtually been invited to listen, adding a comment to this 
effect: 

"That the Emperor in my presence should have spoken 
so openly of the backing Germany had been giving to 

23 



the enemy of her ally seems explicable only on the assump- 
tion that His Majesty is losing or has lost his mind." 

Thus France, Germany's hereditary enemy, was allowed 
to know that Germany had been supporting Turkey in her 
war against Italy, Germany's ally, a fact that was care- 
fully concealed from Italy. 

But though the Italian Government did not know that 
Germany was playing traitor, it suspected that Turkey 
was receiving support of many kinds from Germany. In 
their campaign against the Arabs the Italian soldiers 
repeatedly obtained what to them was certain evidence 
that the enemy was led by German officers. They 
reported this to Rome, but were unable to substantiate 
their convictions by incontestable proof. The Italian 
Ambassador in Berlin was informed of the suspicion that 
officers of the German Army were in Africa leading the 
Arabs against the forces of Germany's ally and was 
directed to watch for direct proof. This was not forth- 
coming for some time, but at last it came, and from a 
source as authoritative as it was unexpected. It was 
nothing less than an official bulletin of the German War 
Department in the form of a list of officers to whom 
pensions had been granted; this contained the names of 
many officers pensioned because of wounds received in 
service in Tripoli against Italy. 

And Germany was Italy's ally! 

THE FATAL ULTIMATUM TO SERBIA 

The Italian Ambassador sent copies of this bulletin to 
Rome, where the newspaper organ of the Nationalist 
Party, L'Idea Nazionale, published a facsimile of it as 
one of its strong arguments in urging the government to 
denounce the Triple Alliance and join forces with the 
Entente Allies in declaring war upon Germany. 

Another instance of Germany's secret support of the 
Arabs against Italy was the discovery that Herr von 
Lochow, the supposed gentleman farmer of the oasis of 

24 



Gurgi, was a German officer in disguise and that his resi- 
dence was really an arsenal full of rifles and ammunition. 

Austria capped the climax of her utter disregard for the 
explicit provisions of the Triple Alliance when she served 
her fatal ultimatum upon Serbia on July 23, 1914, without 
consulting Italy or informing her of her intentions. 

And after the European war broke out and Italy, 
unable then to take an active part in it because her military 
and naval munitions were practically exhausted, had 
declared her neutrality, Germany roused Tripolitania to 
rebellion against Italy. 

Pro-German propagandists here and in Europe have 
cried aloud about the terrible wrong that would be com- 
mitted against the Slav majority of the population of 
Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia if they were transferred from 
Austrian to Italian rule. But the story of how these pro- 
vinces came to have a Slav majority and of the Austrian 
efforts to magnify the apparent size of this Slav population, 
makes the matter appear in a very different light. In 1866 
these districts were Italian by race, by language and by 
tradition. If there were any doubt about this it would be 
set at rest by the fact that in the Austrian laws regulating 
their government they were officially called the "Italian 
Districts," and by a reading of Meyer's "Die roemisch- 
byzantische Municipalfassung in Istrien und Damaltien," 
a book that can scarcely be accused of pro-Italian pre- 
judice ! 

Austria's domination over most of them began only in 
1815. Austria obtained Istria only by the Treaty of 
Campo Formio in 1797. Until 1813 Trieste was an 
autonomous Italian commune, though nominally tributary 
to Austria. 

There had been a sporadic migration of Slavs into these 
Italian territories for several centuries, but the deliberate 
systematic process of turning them from Italian to Slav 
became energetic in 1890. 



25 



A PROTEST FROM THE PEOPLE 

On January 5, 1899, all the Deputies of the provincial 
district of Gorizia, Istria and Trieste, and all the "podesta" 
of all the towns assembled in the City Hall of Trieste and 
signed a formal protest against the "manifest effort to 
denaturalize the education of our people even from infan- 
cy," by depriving the schools of text books in Italian and 
of teachers educated in Italian; by imposing Slav school 
teachers in all grades and in the colleges; "against the in- 
trusion of Slavism into the courts, public offices and 
churches; against the corruption of names in maps and 
books," etc. 

Slav priests were assigned to the churches; the Govern- 
ment offices, including railroad, posts and telegraphs, were 
filled up with Slavs; in baptismal and marriage registers 
and in electoral lists Italian names were changed to Slavic, 
despite the protests of their bearers; arsenals and barracks 
were filled up with Slav soldiers, and all these imported 
Slavs were encouraged to settle down as permanent resi- 
dents of the Italian cities and towns, the vote being given 
to them after a three-years' residence. 

Slav newspapers were subsidized; Slav banks were 
started; everywhere the very existence of the Italian popu- 
lation was made unbearable. From Tolmino to Dalmatia 
the Slavic cry was: "Pri moru Taljanski!" (Into the sea 
with the Italians !) The only history books allowed in the 
schools were those carefully edited by Austrians to dis- 
parage Italy. In Trieste it was even forbidden to teach 
the history of the city, because this was too Italian. 

In Dalmatia this denaturalization took the form of 
physical force; in 1833 there was an actual massacre of 
Italians by Croats at Spalato, and in 1897 the municipality 
of Cattaro was captured by wholesale fraud. 

The communal census shows that in 1900, 77 per cent of 
the population of Dalmatia was Italian and 16 per cent 
Slav; that in 1910 the Italian population was 74 per cent 
and the Slav 20 per cent. The Government census shows 
that by 1910 the Italian population was only 62 per cent 

26 



and the Slav was 31 per cent. Whichever figures be 
correct, the Slavs polled 10,666 votes in the 1910 elections, 
against 6,438 in those of 1901. 

JUGOSLAV AGITATION IS ARTIFICIAL 

It would need a book to tell fully the terrible story of the 
systematic denaturing of these Italian provinces, a story 
that is paralleled only by Prussia's treatment of Poland 
and by England's treatment of Ireland. The herosim with 
which this separated fragment of the Latin race, numbering 
only 450,000, has held fast to its ideals, and in the face of 
the united efforts of many millions of Slavs of every kind, 
officially and systematically organized by the Austrian 
Government is one of the magnificent martyrdoms of 
history. And this new-born propaganda for autonomy on 
the part of the Jugo-Slavs, of which so much has been 
heard in the last few months, especially in America, is only 
a further development of Austro-German hostility to their 
former ally. 

That this is nothing but an artificial agitation is proved 
by the fact that the entire male Slav population of all the 
territories that are represented as pleading for autonomy — 
Serbia alone excepted — are fighting loyally in the armies 
of Austria-Hungary. They have never heard of this mush- 
room Jugo-Slav movement; they have never made any 
attempt to assert the "rights" that have suddenly been 
discovered for them. Jugo-Slavism is said to have been 
made in Germany, but in Rome they say it is really of 
German-American origin. 

This denaturing of the Italian provinces, while not 
evidently in contravention of the Triple Alliance, is really a 
phase of Austrian aggression in the Balkans, against which 
Article VII, of the treaty, is specially directed. The 
Jugo-Slav propaganda is its ultimate development, the 
manifestation of its object — namely, the preservation of 
the Adriatic to the Teutonic powers, so that they may con- 
tinue to launch their warships into an arm of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

And Germany and Austria were for thirty-four years 
Italy's allies! 

27 



THE ASPIRATIONS OF ITALY AND THE RIGHTS 
OF CIVILIZATION* 

By Hon. Arnaldo Agnelli 

Deputy in the Italian Parliament from Milan 

My Dear Friend: 

You have told me of your sympathy for the Italian 
cause and of how you defend us when, in your presence, 
imperialistic intentions and aspirations are attributed to 
Italy; but you also add that you have need of accurate 
data on the part which Italy is playing in the common 
war and on the hopes which she expects to realize. 

This information would mature your sympathy, trans- 
forming it into profound and sure conviction, and more 
than all would complete your authentic information on 
the subject. 

I am ready to give you satisfaction, and I will do it, 
forcing myself to that impartiality and serenity of judg- 
ment which is the first duty of one who speaks of his 
own country to a stranger and a political adversary. I 
will do it the more gladly because I have been able to 
establish the necessity of making some corrections in the 
opinions which are too often given currency in France as 
in England, in Switzerland or elsewhere, the origin of 
which must always be sought for in incomplete informa- 
tion. 

This lack of information does not surprise me. 

In the history of the last thirty years in Italy, our na- 
tional aspirations have had a singular impulse and de- 
velopment. 

Bound, as we were, by an alliance with Austria-Hun- 
gary, as with Germany, the official politics of Italy has 



*A letter to an influential member of the Socialist Party in France, who requested 
enlightenment on the Italian question. 



always, as one might say, had to put the soft pedal on 
the irridentisia question. The government was always 
taking measures of increasing severity in this regard. 
Occasionally it even went so far as to prohibit simple 
patriotic demonstrations and theatrical performances 
which referred to historic events perfectly well known to 
all Italians. 

Austria was always alert, and on the slightest pretext 
never failed to make official complaints and remonstrances. 

Naturally, the profound sentiment of the people and 
the ideals of the best element of all the parties without 
distinction, looked eagerly into the future for the fulfill- 
ment of our national destiny. There was no lack of 
organizations to cultivate this sentiment, to keep it from 
dying out in the spirit of the people, above all to defend 
our language and our civilization beyond the political 
frontiers of Italy; but, officially, Italy never allowed 
herself to refer to the restitution of tier territory. 

We have had many characteristic proofs, both of the 
vitality of this sentiment in the face of every obstacle, 
and of the zeal of our government to intervene and pre- 
vent its manifestation. 

Marcora, President of the Chamber of Deputies, pro- 
nouncing a public eulogy of an old Republican, the 
deputy Socci, who had died shortly before, alluded to the 
Trentino and called it in passing "our Trentino." Socci 
had fought in 1866 with Garibaldi, up to the very gates 
of Trent. The Italian government was obliged to apolo- 
gize to Austria. 

A general, Asinari di Bernezzo, saluting a flag which 
the women of Brescia had presented to a newly formed 
cavalry regiment, ventured to express his desire to see it 
crowned with the laurels of victory for the liberation of 
our brothers; a natural sentiment in a general himself a 
veteran of the wars for Italian independence. He was 
forced to resign his command. A former President of 
the Cabinet, Fortis, spoke rather openly before the 
Chamber of Deputies of Italy's legitimate anxiety over 

29 



the enormous armaments of Austria, and over the fact 
that preparations for an offensive against us were with- 
out doubt in progress, especially in the Trentino. Fortis 
found it very strange that we should be obliged, above 
all things, to protect ourselves from aggression on the 
part of our allies. This utterance was accorded an un- 
paralled demonstration of approval by all the members 
of Parliament. It was the triumph of truth. Tne next 
day Fortis, on the advice of the more prudent, was obliged 
to explain, to modify, to attenuate, to rectify, certain 
details of his too spontaneous, but none the less perfectly 
justified, outburst. 

I could mention numerous instances, which, during the 
period of our alliance, would furnish absolute proof that 
the memory of our brothers, subject to the Austrian 
dominion, was still keenly alive in our hearts; but that 
at the same time the government deemed it necessary to 
conceal it if not to suppress it completely. 

I am not surprised that these facts were entirely un- 
known to the world at large. A country is judged abroad 
synthetically and en masse. It is impossible to make 
known the hidden recesses of its mentality. 

Compare, if you please, our condition with that of 
France after 1870-1871. Your beautiful language so 
well known over all the world, your literature, your novels 
and your dramas which everyone reads and admires, your 
books and your newspapers, the discourses of your ora- 
tors, have spread so widely the knowledge of your suffer- 
ings and of your lively hope in a day of reckoning, that 
no educated person in Europe is unaware of the question 
of Alsace-Lorraine. 

It was notorious, I hasten to add, that the different 
political parties offered different solutions of this great 
question. We are familiar with the speeches of Jaures 
and the book of Sembat, as well as with the activity of 
Deroulede and of Maurice Barres. I have nothing to 
say in this regard except to note that the difference in 
attitude corresponded to a different evolution of ideas; 

30 



but I am satisfied to observe that your problem had been 
placed before Europe. The same problem had been sub- 
mitted to public opinion even for those countries which 
had no existence except in the hopes of their exiled and 
persecuted peoples, as in the case of Poland; while for us 
profound silence shrouded our hopes and aspirations. It 
was necessary to live a long time in Italy to realize how 
widespread and well rooted were these aspirations of 
which even the best informed among the foreigners were 
unaware. Still the hope was strong in us and it was 
founded upon incontestable right. 

You undoubtedly know that Metternich said that 
Italy in his time did not exist politically, that it was 
only a "geographical expression." Without wishing to 
do so, Metternich uttered the most forceful argument in 
favor of our independence and unity. Indeed few na- 
tions in the world have a geographic character so precise 
and clearly determined and can claim frontiers so e cactly 
delineated by nature. 

For the national consciousness, when it was reawakened 
in the first half of the nineteenth century, the summit of 
the Alps and the sea afforded a boundary so exact, a 
natural confine so suggestive that Italy saw indicated 
there all her program. From this fact sprang a double 
consequence, positive and negative, on which I ask you 
to reflect a little. 

Even if Italy did not think of expanding her present 
territory, even if she renounced all intention of extending 
to her natural boundaries, still her safety, her freedom of 
action, her independence, her very dignity will be in peril 
as long as a hostile power retains a foothold on this side 
of the mountain chain which separates her from the 
rest of Europe. 

This is the reason why a feeling such as ours seemed to 
sleep or to be momentarily calmed, but in reality it could 
not be extinguished nor disappear without endangering 
our national existence itself. 

But there was another, or even stronger reason which 

31 



held us back. A reason which I believe is analogous with 
the state of mind of many of our friends, good Socialists 
and good Frenchmen at the same time. 

For, in this instance, without renouncing our hope in 
the just working out of our destiny, we placed above 
every consideration the supreme necessity of maintain- 
ing peace. 

I will indicate the character of this policy in the very 
words of Jaures, who, in a certain sense, is the master of 
us all. 

"This policy," said Jaures in 1909, "necessitates neither 
the repudiation of the right of conquest, nor the proclama- 
tion of that right; it implies faith in the triumph of justice 
which eventually will emerge from the development of 
democracy and from the certainty of a permanent peace." 

We knew, or at least we felt confusedly, what a terrible 
catastrophe would be provoked by war. We had all 
pondered upon that marvellously prophetic page in 
which Jean Jaures spoke of how great would be the dis- 
aster (from every point of view) of a general conflagration. 

In Italy, our formula, both for the radicals and for the 
reform socialists, was not to refuse any measure necessary 
for the national defense; but we could not conceive and 
would not have approved a policy of methodical prepara- 
tion for war. 

Maybe we were mistaken. But such was the fact and 
the necessary consequence was the avoidance of any 
aggressive policy. Many of us wished to reduce our 
armaments and turn our attention and financial efforts 
to economic and social reforms, to public education, and 
to increasing the productivity of our country which had 
just entered the industrial, commercial and agricultural 
movement of the great civilized nations. But we could 
not, without falling into flagrant contradiction, challenge 
Austria with our indisputable right to complete national 
unity, involving irredentismo and at the same time 
curtail our military program. It is absurd to desire the 
end without being willing to provide the means. This 
was our predicament at the beginning of the war. 

33 



As you know, our purely defensive alliance put us 
under no obligation to act with the Central Powers. 

I will say only a word about this matter: Read the 
Austrian Red Book on the conflict with Italy. You will 
find that the consequences of the seventh article of the 
treaty of alliance are very subtly discussed but you will 
not find the least recrimination, the slightest reproof for 
our neutrality. Rather is the whole book dominated by 
the idea that our right to remain neutral was unquestion- 
able. Not for one moment, during those months of end- 
less discussion, did Austria dare hold us to obligations 
derived from a treaty which she had violated both in 
letter and in spirit. 

The "compensations" which were offered us implied 
at the same time three logical consequences which are 
most important to record; first, our full and absolute 
right to remain neutral; second, the violation of the 
treaty of alliance both by Austria and Germany; third, 
the Italian nature, what we would call the ItaUanild 
of the territory they proposed to cede to Italy. 

Free in our actions, we chose deliberately the path 
which we have held in conformity to our ideals of de- 
mocracy. The whole movement from September, 1914 
to May, 1915, the debates which established that our 
intervention was inevitable and caused a radical change 
in our foreign policy, were prompted only by sentiments 
of justice and human solidarity, by indignation against 
the Central Empires, by those very sentiments without 
which humanity would revert into a horde of savages. 

You have only to read the newspapers of that period, 
tracing the course of events day by day, in the publica- 
tions for propaganda, in the speeches in Parliament and 
especially those made at public gatherings. You have 
only to remember that two men, more than any others, 
labored to mould our consciousness, embodying in those 
confused months, the development of public opinion. 
They were two socialists: Battisti, deputy to the Reich- 
stag in Vienna, who spoke in the name of the Trentino 

33 



and the other unredeemed provinces, and Destree, deputy 
in the Belgian Parliament, who spoke in the name of his 
own country. 

Today, after two years and a half of sharp and arduous 
warfare, after the intervention of America which has 
without doubt given a new aspect to the conflict, have 
we not the right to insist, even in the face of all Europe, 
have we not the duty to stand firm until the day when 
our brothers are liberated, exactly as do the French who 
never lose sight of the question of Alsace-Lorraine? 

Italy was party to a system of alliance solely for the 
sake of maintaining peace. In 1913 she refused to be- 
come entangled in another Bellum punitivum premedi- 
tated by Austria and Germany against Serbia. Not 
being responsible for the conflict, had she not the right 
to expect results which would resolve the problems of 
nationality, guaranteeing peace for the future? 

I believe that we have the right to resist, especially 
for our brothers who are still under the Austrian yoke, 
the most terrible of all foreign dominations. 

In fact the Hapsburgs have never known any scruples 
in the methods which they use for dealing with the un- 
happy races which are in the minority in the Austrian 
Empire, the Czech-Slovenes and the Jugo-Slavs, in short 
all those who are not either Germans or Hungarians. 
The existence and the continuation of the Empire has 
no other foundation than systematic persecution and 
the racial hatreds which the ruling caste has known how 
to arouse, and has always kept alive, letting it loose 
sometimes with an incredible cynicism. 

The Italians of these lands to be redeemed are worthy 
of the sacrifices which they are costing Italy. For, heed 
it well, a long history of struggle, of suffering, of martyr- 
dom, had strengthened their desire and confirmed the 
necessity of their union with their mother country. 

The Trentino, eastern Friuli, Istria and the other pro- 
vinces and cities of the eastern coast of the Adriatic 
cherished the hope, during all the period of the Resorgi- 

34 



mento, of being united to the other Italian provinces. 
Many of their sons fought in the wars of independence. 
Driven by the revolutionary force of their principles and 
their energy, guided by men like Cavour and Garibaldi, 
Italy developed into a nation, her various regions were 
welded into unity around the center of Rome, the mother 
city. What was this movement if not the continuation 
and fulfilment of the impulse which the French Revolu- 
tion gave to Europe? 

No one then disputed the right of Trent and Trieste to 
become a member of the great Italian family, any more 
than that of Naples, of Milan, of Turin or Palermo. 
Even Austria, who dominated directly such an important 
part of Northern Italy, and had a strong indirect influence 
in the entire peninsula, had not yet thought seriously of 
undertaking a work of denationalization. After 1866 the 
scene changes. A large Italian population of nearly a 
million inhabitants is left on the margin on the Austrian 
Empire. Austria, who in the treaty of peace had suc- 
ceeded in holding a part of the Italian territory, hopes to 
use the Trentino as an easy ingress and a constant men- 
ace to Italy. By means of the eastern Friul , Trieste and 
the coast, she wishes to insure for herself mastery of the 
sea and of the hinterland, and dominion over the Balkans. 
With this in view she promotes Pan-Germanism in the 
Trentino and encourages the Slavic population in every 
way to move to Istria in general and to Trieste in par- 
ticular. In this scheme we may find the reason for the 
abolition of any form of autonomous government for the 
Trentino, notwithstanding the desire of all parties to 
weld it with the German Tyrol. In this scheme we may 
find the reason for the traditional policy of Austria, which 
obstinately refused to establish an Italian University 
and limited or abolished other Italian schools. After 
the annexation of Venice to Italy the diplomas issued by 
the University of Padua, which had been frequented for 
centuries by the youth of the Trentino and Trieste, lost 
all legal value in Austria. The right of the Italians to a 

35 



higher education in their own tongue was incontestable. 
To oblige them to study in the German language at 
Vienna or Gratz was an injustice. This right was con- 
ceded theoretically but denied in fact. After exerting 
every sort of pressure, after enormous loss of time cover- 
ing many years (only the Turkish Empire, her worthy 
ally of today, can compete with Austria for systematic 
and deliberate slowness of legal procedure) a law course 
was instituted in the ultra-German city of Insbruck, 
and even that course was not a complete one. 

The lectures began on November 3, 1904; on November 
4, they were suspended on account of disturbances caused 
by the populace who persecuted the one hundred and 
fifty Italian students. The populace was allowed to 
enter and destroy the Italian law school. 

After this admirable example of hultur the lectures 
were not resumed. The Italian University was still 
spoken of and all possible solutions were discussed, but 
its institution at Trieste, its natural seat, unanimously 
demanded by all Italians, was never permitted; and 
there was never the least indication of putting into 
effect the project which was in fact only a ruse. The 
real purpose of the government was to prevent the forma- 
tion and consolidation of a national consciousness among 
the Italians. 

There was not a single governmental high school in 
Trieste; the only one existing was maintained by the 
municipality. Instead there were many German and 
Slav schools in purely Italian districts and everywhere 
there were officials who did not understand either the 
language nor the needs of the Italians. 

Unheard-of restrictions as to liberty of education, of 
meeting, of association, of thought, of discussion, were 
aimed against the Italians as such, while the antagonistic 
races were favored in every way. 

Our countrymen waged their national war on the 
ground of legality. Do you remember what Jaures 
wrote about the similar struggle which was going on in 

36 



Alsace-Lorraine? The analogy is very striking. Friend 
of peace as he was, he nevertheless admired the task to 
which your irredenfi had dedicated themselves. "No 
longer awaiting," he said, the resumption of justice by 
reason of the fortunes of war, Alsace has told herself 
that her duty and her safety consisted at least in the 
present territorial disposition of Europe, in preserving the 
originality of her ideas, perpetuating under the yoke of 
the conqueror that fragment of the soul of France which 
she held in trust." And it is in this manner that among 
all classes of the people of Alsace the French culture and 
the French language have never been so universal as 
they are today. Thus, in the present moment in Alsace, 
all the parties are grouped together, without one conced- 
ing anything to the advantage of another, each clinging to 
its own ideals: Catholics, Socialists, Democrats, Anti- 
Clericals, they are all united in demanding from Germany 
a broader administrative autonomy, to protest against the 
brutality of Prussian bureaucracy, to insist on the right 
of the people of Alsace-Lorraine to continue their French 
culture. 

Austria did not, in fact, have the excuse of an exception- 
al regime for the Italian provinces. The whole govern- 
mental system in these provinces is in opposition to the 
written guarantees of the Austrian constitution, and of 
the fundamental laws defining the general rights of 
citizens (December 21, 1867), as established by article 19: 
"All the nationalities of the state have equal rights and 
every nationality taken separately has the right to pre- 
serve and cultivate its national life and language. Equal- 
ity before the law for all languages of the country, in 
schools, in public office, in public life, is recognized by 
the state. In those provinces inhabited by people of 
differing nationality the public schools shall be so con- 
ducted that each nationality will find the necessary means 
to acquire an education in its own tongue without being 
obliged to learn another language of the country." 

I wanted particularly to quote literally this paragraph 

37 



to demonstrate the real value which new obligations 

would have in Austria: They would be violated as usual. 
****** 

Speaking to a foreigner and a Socialist I will take a 
strictly international point of view. 

In London, February 7, 1915, before Italy entered the 
war, the Socialists of the Entente proclaimed their 
principle: "In all Europe, from Alsace-Lorraine to the 
Balkans, peoples annexed by force must recover the 
right to dispose of themselves." 

It is an elementary principle of any internationalism 
that there is no real and sincere social progress without 
absolute equality of conditions among the people, with- 
out respect to race. On the other hand, why not say it? 
It would seem in certain moments that preoccupation 
with social questions might cause the question of nation- 
ality to be forgotten. It may be true, for example, for 
the English Socialists and for those of the Socialists in 
France, Russia and Italy who do not live in constant 
touch with the centers where, under the heel of foreign 
oppression, the struggle for nationality still surges im- 
placably. But for countries which are not in possession 
of their independence, where racial animosities are still 
alive, where an astute government aggravates it to the 
limit of its power, the two battles become merged, and 
any social progress is paralyzed; any serious victory is 
rendered impossible for lack of the conditions essential 
to such progress and such victory. 

Ask the Czech Socialists, the Socialists of Alsace-Lor- 
raine, ask the Socialists of Belgium where perfidious 
Germany strives to nourish the hatred of the Fleming 
for the Walloon. And if there be any who can be called 
Socialists at Trieste (not at Trent nor in the other Italian 
provinces), who dare affirm the contrary — who are among 
the most faithful adherents of Scheidemann and his 
policy, they represent the most | absurd and monstrous 
contradiction. They surely deserve to be, as they in- 
deed were in other times, friends of Prince Hohenlohe, 

38 



governor of the Italian city of Trent in the name of the 
Hapsburgs. They deserve to be today, as they were in 
truth in their local newspapers, mouthpieces of the 
Austrian General Staff. 

We can even go so far as to understand that in times of 
peace those Socialists take no part in the struggle for 
nationality, even declare their indifference to it. A 
grave error from our point of view, but capable of explana- 
tion if one admits that they are so absorbed by the labor 
of completing the organization of the proletariat that 
they do not wi h to divert from it the least force. But 
today when we have a glimpse of the possibility of pre- 
paring the confederation of nations, when we hope to 
bring forth from all our misfortunes and all our agony a 
logical and organized international life, founded on 
justice and peace, today — when those who call them- 
selves Socialists follow the lead of a tradition-bound, 
reactionary, militaristic and clerical state — that is the 
thing we cannot understand without attributing it to a 
fearful blindness. The empire of the Hapsburgs, of 
which these Socialists would be the support, is absolutely 
incapable of internal reformation. It enjoys a residue of 
cohesion which is secured to it by the brutality of its 
methods of government, by its blindly, summary military 
and civil discipline, inexorable in its acts of repression, 
and by the division and complete opposition of the ele- 
ments which compose it, which ought to work together 
for the common good and yet which cannot even attempt 
it without danger of a revolution. 

The spectacle which the Reichsrat furnishes is a proof 
of this; the fact that the Emperor of Austria, after reign- 
ing for several months, has not dared to swear to support 
the constitution is another. 

Now, that some Socialists should wish to reinforce, to 
continue, to perpetuate all this, let me repeat it, is absurd 
and monstrous. 

One name should suffice to silence them, that of Cesare 
Battisti, the Socialist deputy from Trent; that pure, in- 

39 



corruptible and generous man who paid with his life- 
blood for his devotion to his country, for love of which 
he never forgot nor deserted the cause of Socialism. 

While others did not blush to climb the ladder to favor 
in the service of the Government which oppressed their 
brothers, Cesare Battisti, at the Reichsrat of Vienna and 
at the provincial Diet of Innsbruck, pronounced fiery- 
denunciations of Austrian militarism. He did his whole 
duty as a Socialist but he declared most emphatically 
that "any opposition to the reconstruction of national 
unities was an opposition to Socialism itself, because the 
existence of the national groups was the logical and 
necessary antecendent of the development of civilization 
and therefore of Socialism." (Battisti, II Trentino, page 
15.) 

After having fought with tongue and with pen, he came 
to Italy in August, 1914, so as not to serve in the Austrian 
army in its aggression on Serbia. He volunteered in the 
Italian army at the beginning of the war. As an officer 
of the Alpini, he fought like a hero, wounded in action, he 
was captured, sentenced to die, and mounted the scaffold 
crying in the face of his executioners, "Long live Italy." 

Nor was he the only one. An Istrian, a man of the 
people, Nazario Sauro, was executed by Austria; others like 
Filzi and Rismondo suffered the same fate, as did the first 
of all these patriots, Guglielmo Oberdan, who was put to 
death by Austria in 1882. 

And these are only a few of the bloodiest incidents in a 
long persecution of which I could cite numerous instances. 
Associations were methodically broken up, newspapers 
suppressed, prosecutions begun without foundation; on 
every pretext and even without pretext, Austria punished 
with prison, misery, and exile, those who were and who 
declared themselves Italians. Let us ask ourselves again: 
Is the progress of civilization possible; can the social 
struggle be carried on fairly and freely, when the actions of 
the government are inspired by such tendencies? 

This, the true and unhappy condition of the Italian 

40 



provinces which are under Austrian domination, is proven 
by all the proclamations which these peoples have ad- 
dressed to Italy, and even to the president of the French 
Republic in 1910, on the occasion of his visit to Rome. 
This is the reason why in the present circumstances we 
should not think of resolving this problem by consulting 
the people in a referendum or a plebiscite. 

The practical and technical impossibility of this pro- 
cedure has been demonstrated by the address to Citizen 
Branting on the part of the Socialists of Alsace-Lorraine. 
But we have even stronger reasons for opposing the 
referendum. 

All Italians subject to Austria, who have succeeded in 
escaping either to Russia or to Italy, are deprived of all 
means of communication with their fellow citizens: 
50,000 are in Italy; many thousands enlisted in the 
Italian army are fighting at the front; they are fighting for 
Italy, or rather for a new and better Europe; hundreds 
and hundreds of them have already lost their lives. 

In Austria, more than 50,000 Italians from the unre- 
deemed provinces, the flower of the Italian population (one 
need only examine the list to convince himself), have been 
interned. The number of dead, invalids and infirm is 
appalling. Over 1,000 citizens are imprisoned in the 
fortresses; all the rest of the men who can possibly bear 
arms have been mustered into the Austrian army, which is 
itself only a vast concentration camp and a huge fortress 
in which the officer abuses the soldier in whom has never 
burned the spark of a common national ideal. The 
population consists of women, children and aged persons; 
terror pervades everywhere; how could these people be 
consulted? Into what trap would we lead them? Bear 
in mind that the Austro-Hungarian premier, in open 
Reichsrat, had declared that all these measures of oppres- 
sion and repression are necessary, indispensable, inevitable. 
Without these, he declares, Austrian national life would 
be unsafe. What other country treats its citizens in such 
a manner? Is this not a terrible confession? Does not this 
amount to a plebiscite? 

41 



And note that what is being done to the Italians, is also 
perpetrated for the same reasons against the Jugo-Slavs 
and the Czechs. 

Permit me to make a final observation. You are 
perhaps saying that since there is a racial rivalry in certain 
places between the Italians and the Slavs, the Italian 
subjects of Austria, seeking to unite with Italy, think only 
of themselves and that guarantees are necessary for the 
representatives of the other young and growing races, who 
have themselves no less a right to live, to prosper and to 
progress in perfect liberty. 

All this is entirely just in principle and deserves an exact 
explanation. 

We ask, first of all, the annexation to Italy of cities and 
regions where the population is solidly Italian; where the 
Slavic and German element is as small in proportion as is 
the foreign element in certain cities of the interior, such 
as Florence and Rome, centers of Italian sentiment since 
Italy first was; we will not correct the exaggerated, altered, 
falsified census taken by Austria. But where it is a ques- 
tion of towns with mixed population, it is just to recognize 
and insure every right, the school above all else, to any 
nationality living on Italian soil. 

Is Italy, or is she not, better qualified than Austria to 
give these assurances and these legitimate guarantees? 

There is a triumphant response to be given. It is 
founded on experience. Even the worst calumniators of 
Italy have not been able to cite a single fact to prove any 
act of oppression or persecution against the French, 
Albanian, German and Slavic peoples who live on this 
side of the Alps in Italian territory. 

Some of these, like the Albanian population in the south 
and in Sicily, have lived in Italy from time immemorial. 
The French of the Val d'Aosta, the Germans of the Veneto, 
the 30,000 Slovenes on the banks of the Natisone near 
Cividale have never had occasion to complain of the 
treatment they have received in Italy. Their ethno- 
graphic individuality is fully respected, and this fact is 
easily explained. Italy owes her existence to principles 



of liberty just as Austria owes hers to principles of autoc- 
racy; all the guarantees, all th« greatest precautions are 
taken on this account. 

Therefore if it is a question of choosing between Italy 
and Austria, our enemies have shown us the measure of 
their tyranny and their scorn for every civil right, for in the 
course of their long history they have always been the 
very center of reaction in Europe. 

If, on the other hand, the goal of the independence and 
unification of all people is reached, Europe has without 
doubt the right to demand that an adjustment be made 
among those interested, on both sides, which is com- 
patible with the free development of all nationalities. It 
will only remain to have it put into execution by the most 
scrupulously just men. To disturb this possibility of 
harmony, which you well know is about to be realized, 
would be to play into the hands of our common enemy. 

In the great public square of Trent, the veneration of 
the Italians of all parts of our country has caused to be 
erected a monument to Dante. It stands there, a symbol 
of our unity, a memorial of our greatness, an inspiration to 
our duty for today and for the future. 

I can make no better summary of my thoughts than to 
quote the words which are carved on that pedestal. The 
words of the inscription were uttered by Giovanni Bovio, 
the republican in whom a tempestuous political life had 
not disturbed the calm of his philosophic vision. It is 
reported that our enemies have defaced and insulted this 
monument. If this is true (I still hope that it is not) it 
must be concluded that they were unworthy to read these 
words — much less to understand them. 

The inscription says: "To Dante, the Father, with the 
homage of the whole nation, bow ye strangers, let us bow, 
Italians, and let us rise again brothers once more in justice." 
Is that day still far off? I do not know, but I know this, 
that the ideal which Italy, cradle of our civilization, is 
striving to realize at the price of her most precious blood 
springs from this noble motive which honors whatever 
nation cherishes it. Arnaldo Agnelli. 

43 



ITALY'S EFFORT* 

By Paul Deschanel 
President of the French Chamber of Deputies 

When, in May 1915, Italy took her place besides the 
Allies she fully recognized the difficulty of her task. She 
knew that the war would be long and arduous, that it 
would cost enormously in men and money, that it would 
cause an upheaval of her economic life. 

The rupture of the Triple Alliance obliged Italy to seek 
other markets for her commerce than those offered in the 
Central Empires. But Italy knew also that she could 
not remain neutral at the moment when a new Europe 
was to be born. In that conviction she was faithful to 
the tradition of the great patriots to whom she owes her 
unity. Mazzini said: "I love my country because I love 
the idea of country, I love Liberty because I believe in 
Liberty, and I want our rights because I believe in Bight." 
For two years Italy has made a strong fight. Her keen 
diplomacy has little by little broken the bonds with which 
the Germans sought to restrict it. The rupture with 
Germany delivered Italy from a real servitude. The 
proud nation of Manin, Victor Emmanuel, Cavour and 
Garibaldi has earned her independence. Free she now 
labours for the common cause. On the desolate plateau 
of the Carso, at the summit of the Trentino Alps, her 
armies have won, in spite of the enormous difficulties 
which the nature of the ground offered. As in France, 
all classes have participated in the struggle and even the 
King, who has been in the midst of the campaign since 
the beginning, prides himself on being like his grand- 
father, "the first soldier of the Italian independence." 
Italians of the north and of the south, Lombards, Nea- 



*An article which appeared in La Renaissance, May 26, 1917. 

44 



politans, Calabrians, Sicilians, Tuscans, Venetians, Ro- 
mans and Emilians, have responded with the same cour- 
age to the call of the fatherland. Young men and old 
have bound together their strength and their hopes. 

Behind the lines, life is transformed. Everywhere 
there are manufacturing plants and work shops — I have 
just seen those in Genoa — a world working for the de- 
fense of the nation. Everywhere the land is cultivated, 
and where men are lacking, children and women replace 
them. But in spite of these efforts, life is not easy. The 
people have submitted cheerfully to many restrictions. 
To cover the expense of the struggle new taxes have been 
levied and the people have subscribed largely to the 
public loans. The immense resources thus accumulated 
make it possible to keep pace with the heavy burden of 
war. What Salandra in 1915 required of the nation is 
now a fact: "All strength is united into one effort, all 
hearts into one heart." The women of Italy, like those 
of France, have shown themselves worthy of the utmost 
respect. For two years they have alleviated suffering, 
consoled the grief-striken and encouraged the weak. 
Great in their charity, they have been great also in their 
misfortunes. Innumerable bereavements have found 
them resigned and ready for sacrifice. 

Thus all will have a share in the victory for which all 
have labored. The "Terza Italia" will open a new era of 
prosperity — an era which Carducci, the poet of the epics 
of 1859, Pales tro, Magenta, San Martino, the exploits of 
Garibaldi (renewed by his grandsons in the Argonne 
today), the "one thousand," the proclamation of the 
capital of Rome, the prophet of greater Italy and the 
achievements of Cadorna's soldiers — all have prepared 
for Italy. 

During a glorious peace, glorious not only in the realm 
of literature, art and science, but also in agriculture, in- 
dustry and commerce, Italy will pursue her way along 
the path bright with immortal beauty. 



45 



ITALY'S CLAIM TO ISTRIA* 

By Prof. Charles Upson Clark 
Of the American Academy in Rome 

To the Editor of the New York Times: 

On his deathbed in June, 1861, Camillo Cavour summed 
up his life work. He had guided the little Piedmontese 
kingdom in that marvelous career which had changed 
Italy from Metternich's contemptuous "geographical 
expression" to a realm powerful enough to be courted by 
Bismarck. The Quirinal was still the palace of the Pope; 
Venice was still Austrian; but Cavour foresaw their speedy 
union with the House of Savoy. "As for Istria and the 
Tyrol," said he, "that is another matter. That will be the 
task of another generation." 

And yet, only five years later, Italian armies nearly 
realized the ambition so well put by Mazzini: "Italy's 
eastern frontier has been drawn ever since Dante wrote 

A Pola, presso del Quarnaro 
Che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna (Inferno ix, 113.) 

(At Pola, near the Quarnaro, which encloses Italy, and 
laves her boundaries.) 

On July 22, 1866, General Cialdini wrote General 
Cadorna (father of the former Italian Commander-in-Chief, 
who is thus Cavour's "other generation") : "If the enemy 
has abandoned Gorizia, as I assume, and is now two or 
three days' march away, you will have one division occupy 
Gorizia. . . With the other two you will proceed to 
occupy Trieste. . . But if the enemy's troops have held 
firm at Gorizia you will go and attack them with all three 
divisions, and, after beating them as vigorously as you can, 
have one division follow them up, and with the other two 



*A Utter published in the New York Times, December 23, 1917. 

46 



push on toward Trieste." And even after the failure of 
this plan the kingdom of Italy nearly secured its end by 
diplomacy. General Govone, Victor Emmanuel's pleni- 
potentiary in Prussia, was able to write the Italian Foreign 
Minister from Nikolsburg on July 28 that, having asked 
Bismarck if in the word "Venetia" he included the 
Trentino and Istria, "he answered 'yes/ and authorized 
me, on my requesting him, to make that official statement 
to your Excellency." Then Italy would have realized the 
sober judgment of Napoleon when he sanctioned the 
statement of Prince Eugene Beauharnais — "Eugene is the 
only one of us who never makes mistakes," Napoleon used 
to say, and with good reason — that the only scientific and 
satisfactory boundary of Italy is that "traced by nature 
herself along the mountain summits which divide the 
watersheds of the Black Sea and the Adriatic." That 
line, added Napoleon, "would pass between Laibach and 
the Isonzo; would include part of Carniola and Istria, and 
would join the Adriatic at Fiume." 

But, alas, in 1866, victorious Prussia decided not to 
overhumiliate Austria — that Austria which Mazzini had 
so justly likened to Turkey; one who wishes to break up 
the Turkish Empire, said he, and maintain the Austrian, 
is supporting a contradiction; the two anomalies will 
stand or fall together. Bismarck was not ready for that 
step; he had further use for Austria; and the Italian Army 
and Navy in 1866 were not in themselves strong enough to 
round out Italian unity. In vain did Ricasoli, head of the 
Cabinet, point out that so long as Austria continued to 
hold a foot of Italian soil there would never be a lasting 
peace. Bismarck himself recognized the blunder in his 
memorandum of April, 1868. ("Germany and Italy 
Natural Allies.") "By the end of the current year," he 
wrote, "Germany should form one single powerful State, 
extending from the Baltic to the Alps, from the Rhine to 
the Vistula and the Drave. Italy ought no longer to have 
choice provinces in foreigners' possession. . . . The empire 
of the Mediterranean belongs incontestably to Italy. 

47 



She possesses in that sea coasts which are a dozen times 
longer than those of France. Marseilles and Toulon 
cannot be brought into comparison with Genoa, Leghorn, 
Naples, Palermo, Ancona, Venice, and Trieste." 

Bismarck, then, and Napoleon saw as clearly as Cavour 
and Mazzini that the manifest destiny of Italy was to 
reunite with herself that Istrian province which the fatal 
Treaty of Campoformio had torn in 1797 from her Venetian 
allegiance of centuries, and handed over to the tender 
mercies of Austria. Istria was again Italian under 
Napoleon, from 1806 to 1814; and all the tireless activity 
of Vienna, her attempts to make Italians speak German 
by refusing them any higher schools with Italian-speaking 
instructors; her brutal policy of filling Istria with Slovenian 
and Croatian peasants, and with public officials of other 
Slav nationalities; her persecution of every public man or 
every town council that ventured to stress Italian sym- 
pathies even in literature or art — a process of the same 
nature and longer duration than that of Prussia in Alsace- 
Lorraine — all this had had so little success that Garibaldi 
could write in 1867: "I am a true friend of Istria; and the 
warmest of my desires is that I may be able to serve the 
cause of that Italian country;" and in 1878, to Bizzoni of 
Genoa: "Let us prepare Italy for the war to the death 
against Austria, in which our stake is * to be or not to be ' 
for other centuries;" and to Trieste: "If to-day I regret 
that I am an old man, it is that I am of little use to the 
sacred cause of Trieste and Trent; at any rate I shall be 
proud to give it the last days of my life." 

Nor was Dante the only Italian poet to remark that 
Istria is part of Italy. Carducci, in his famous tributes of 
December, 1882, to Guglielmo Oberdan, who had just 
been hanged at Trieste, issued the appeal which conse- 
crated the effort of the next generation: "On the north- 
east, from the Central and Eastern Alps, the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire has us by the throat; on the northwest, 
from the Western Alps, the French Republic threatens 
us at our shoulders. On our coasts we are at every one's 

48 



mercy. . . . Now we need social reforms, for justice; 
economic reforms, for strength; arms, arms, arms, for 
security. And arms, not for defense, but for offense. 
Italy can only protect herself by attacking; otherwise she 
will be invaded. . . . Let us raise, within ten years, on the 
furthest crest of these Alps of ours, a monument to Gaius 
Marius and to Giuseppe Garibaldi, with the motto: 
* Foreigners, back ! ' " 

And Italy's greatest modern poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, 
is carrying into execution these precepts of Carducci's, not 
only by the enthusiasm created by his patriotic verse but 
by those airplane flights over Trieste, Pola, and Cattaro, 
of which he has given us such rhapsodic descriptions. 

I have quoted enough to show how Istria was regarded 
by the makers of modern Italy. Why is this? What is 
there in that rocky promontory, only about 50 miles long 
by 40 across, that calls forth such single-hearted devotion? 
Why is it that statesmen who hesitated about other 
Adriatic problems were always convinced of Italy's rights 
to Istria? 

I suppose the first impelling cause is historical. Istria 
was as thoroughly Roman a province as Venetia; she 
fought the barbarians of past ages as bravely; she clung 
to the Roman government of Ravenna until her own 
free communes arose, as on the mainland opposite; 
and in the thirteenth century she came under the 
protection of Venice, whose soft dialect is still the 
speech of all her seaport towns and inland cities. Not 
till Napoleon's ambition led him to use Venice as 
a pawn with Austria was Istria severed from Italy; 
and even then, as we have seen, she was reunited 
with Italy from 1806 to 1814. Austria, then, has had just 
a century in which to win Istrian allegiance; and she has 
made use of every device known to the Teuton. By 
wholesale importation she has made the countryside Slav; 
but Italians still pay five-sixths of the rent tax, three- 
quarters of the industrial tax, four-fifths of the income 
tax. She gives subventions to some fifty-five Croatian 

49 



schools — those of Sts. Cyril and Methodius — but that it is 
purely missionary work is shown by the fact that Istrians 
contribute only about 10 per cent of the receipts; the rest 
is supplied by the Government and private and clerical 
contributions from Croatia. Austria has filled Istria with 
German and Slav civil, military, and naval employes; in 
Pola, for instance, in the 1912 elections, only 1 per cent of 
the navy vote was for the Italian candidate. Italians, 
then, are as justified in feeling sympathy for their Istrian 
brethren as do the French for the Alsatians. It may be 
said that the incorporation of a partly Slav population in 
Italy would be unjust, and that a plebiscite would be the 
only just solution. Happily, Italy can show many a 
valley where she rules over people of non-Italian tongue, 
who are as devoted as the Tuscans or the Venetians. The 
Waldensians speak Provencal; the upper Val d'Aosta, 
French; at Macugnaga one hears the German of South 
Switzerland; Albanian, Greek, and Catalan are spoken in 
various parts of Italy; and in Friuli are even several 
thousand Slavs who have been contented Italians since 
1866. The great Latin democracy may be trusted never 
to apply the methods of her feudal, aristocratic opponent. 

Historically, then, Istria is a segment of unredeemed 
Italy. Geographically, she is as truly Italian. Italy is 
bounded by the Alps and the three seas; and the Julian 
Alps swing across the base of Istria, divide it off from the 
Slav hinterland, and give it, by their protection, a Medi- 
terranean climate, with the olive groves and the vine- 
yards so characteristic of Italy. In fact, as I traveled 
through Istria, I was struck by its resemblance to Greece 
and Spain (especially Estremadura) as well as to Italy; 
but there is nothing Central European about it. 

But Italy has a further reason for demanding the retro- 
cession of her lost province. Istria in foreign possession is 
a knife poised over her breast. The Adriatic has low-lying 
sandy shores to the west, without a single first-class harbor. 
Istria alone has half a dozen excellent ports; and Austria 
has made of Pola one of the world's great naval bases. 

50 



Austria's possession of the eastern Adriatic coast has closed 
that sea to Italy during the war; and if we are not to sow 
the seed of future wars in our peace negotiation the Aus- 
trian naval hierarchy must be banished; with a new South 
Slav State — a greater Serbo-Croatia — the case would be 
different, and a fair division of Dalmatia would secure it 
the necessary outlets on the sea, even with Istria wholly 
Italian. 

Venice built her palaces of Istrian stone and her galleys 
of Istrian timber; Carpaccio and Schiavone were painters 
as Italian as their contemporaries of the peninsula. It is 
a noble series of Italian names from Istria that is crowned 
by that of Nazario Sauro of Capodistria, the devoted 
mariner who gave to Italy his knowledge of Istrian coasts 
and harbors when the war broke out, and on whom Austria 
has wreaked vengeance, as she has on Cesare Battisti, the 
former Deputy from Trent. From Alboin the Lombard 
down, the Teuton has never failed to add some tragic com- 
pelling touch to his maladroit efforts at controlling Latin 
peoples; the scaffolds of Battisti and of Sauro are a re- 
minder to Italy and to the world of what is in store if 
Austria remains on Italian soil. 

Charles Upson Clark. 

New York, December 21, 1917. 



51 



PUTTING ALBANIA BACK ON THE MAP* 

By Amy A. Bernardy 

There runs wild about the press just now such an 
amount of incompetent talk and criticism about Albania 
and the present Italian protectorate of it, that a few 
facts will not come amiss for the clearer understanding 
of the situation. To begin with, should the reader not 
be quite familiar with the intricacies of Balkanic and 
Adriatic geography, let him refer to a good map and 
locate precisely the positions of which the names will 
recur here and there in these columns. Then he must 
imagine a rugged, picturesque, mountainous country 
looking down from the heights of the Akrokeraunian 
Mountains spoken of by Horace and Byron, upon the 
Adriatic, or rather Ionian Sea, and across it to the oppo- 
site shores of Italian Puglia, rising terraced and clear 
out of the shining waters. 

From the wide gulf of Valona, protected by the cliffs 
of the mountains and guarded by the island of Saxseno, 
the road winds through the alluvial plains along the 
course of the more important Albanian waters and moun- 
tain passes; following in the traces of the ancient civiliza- 
tions, it leads on one side to Epirus and Macedonia, on 
the other to the ancient Pelagonia, Sardica and Thes- 
salonica, i. e.> to the present Monastir, Sofia and Salonica. 
This was in fact the road through which the Roman 
armies penetrated into the heart of the Balkans. Nor 
are these fragments of the Via Egnatia the only survival 
of history on Albanian ground, but several Venetian 
castles and ruins crown the hills at Santi Quaranta, Argiro- 
castro, and, not to speak of various others, Tepeleni, 
which boasts also an interesting single-arched Roman 



*Reprinted from the Boston Evening Transcript, August 1, 1917. 

52 



bridge. Mosques and Mohammedan religious monu- 
ments are frequent, since two-thirds of the Albanians 
are good Mohammedans, though they hate the Turk and 
his political and military domination worse, perhaps, 
than any other of the several foreign lordships to which 
they have been subjected or with which they have been 
threatened in the course of centuries, and at least as 
well as they hate the Greek. With Venice they got 
along capitally, since Venice knew enough of history and 
politics in a general way not to force nationalities, not 
to abuse and oppress the land financially, and to give 
them on the other hand all the benefit of her finished and 
perfected civilization. To this day the olive-groves of 
Valona testify to the civilizing influences of Venice, for 
it was the republic that had them planted and paid a 
silver coin as a price for every plant reaching a certain 
height and size. Rightfully enough, then, is the Lion 
of St. Mark to this day a symbol dear to the memory of 
the Albanians. 

THE MANY ALBANIAN TRIBES 

The Albanian language, primordial, perhaps pelasgic, 
in its formation, has no written literature, but in its 
place boasts what we might call a noble rhapsodic tradi- 
tion, songs, legends, historical and epic narrations, familiar 
to the people, handed down through centuries and genera- 
tions along with the wonderful silver, turquoise and coral 
jewelry, with the brilliant colors and embroideries of the 
women's attire, with the extremely picturesque accoutre- 
ment of the men. Thus as a well-defined unit in tradi- 
tion, language and nationality have the Albanians reached 
the threshold of modernity through endless strife and 
struggle — the fate of the borderlands — and never achieved 
a well-defined political position of their own because of 
one shortcoming and imperfection in their national unit — 
internal discord and rivalry. The Albanian as a nation- 
ality is one, but the tribes are several; intervengeance 

53 



dating from past generations a law; and such discipline 
under the stress of the superior national ideal as could 
bring them together in self-government a myth. With 
all their magnificent primitive forces and uncurbed 
atavistic traditions raging among them, the Albanians 
are today, self admittedly, immature for self-government, 
and apt to fall prey of the most unscrupulous of their 
various neighbors, therefore, of the least desirable, not 
only to them, but to the whole of civilized Europe, that 
is, as matters stand today, to the whole of the Allies. 

PLANTING KULTUR IN ALBANIA 

It is regrettable that space prevents us here from 
tracing even rapidly the interesting developments of the 
Albanian idea from the time of their great leader and 
national hero, Scanderbeg, down to the end of the nine- 
teenth century. But we must recall at least, from more 
recent political events, the "Statement of the League of 
Prizrend" to the Berlin convention of 1878, which was 
written at Scutari and submitted to the British repre- 
sentative, Lord Beaconsfield; and the important discus- 
sions of the "Convention of Monastir" held by the 
Albanians during the Turkish revolution to uphold their 
rights and state their wishes once more in the face of the 
crumbling Ottoman domination. This led up to the 
proclamation of Albanian independence, the twenty- 
eighth day of November, 1912, on the part of a number of 
delegates of the various Albanian tribes, and the conse- 
quent constitution of a provisional government, with 
Ismail Kemal Bey for its chief. This proclamation dis- 
gusted Greece, who had her own views on at least a part 
of Albania, and proceeded to answer it by bombarding 
Valona on December third of that same year. The im- 
plied menace hastened European diplomatic action on 
the subject, and on December 17 the neutralization of 
the autonomous principality of Albania under the pro- 
tectorate of the great powers became a fact; the begin- 

54 



ning, it was hoped, of a new history. Unfortunately, 
instead, the Kultur succeeded in planting a German 
princeling, Wied, into the new-born principality, and 
disaster was inevitable, even if the great war had not 
broken out in 1914. As it was, Wied ran, and Italy was 
good enough to let him out on one of her ships; but it is 
not probable that "Wied," or king "Tino," by the way, 
who was allowed a similar privilege, feel adequately 
grateful. It may be added, incidentally, that, if these 
two weren't worth saving, the Italian navy took across 
the Adriatic some hundred thousand who were; namely, 
the defeated and heroic remains of the Servian army, 
with the old king and General Putnik, thus doing for 
Servia what France and England did for Belgium. But 
this is another story. 

Albania's tragic problems 

Then came a very sad time for Albania, with the 
terrors of war and of advancing hostile armies, with 
Austrian menace and Greek intrigue clashing with each 
other, but both bent on circumventing the allied influ- 
ence and inevitable advance. Famine and epidemics 
were all over the land, and the danger of disease spread- 
ing across the Adriatic and over western Europe was not 
the least among the problems that confronted the Allies. 

Meanwhile, moral problems equally tragic and severe 
had been con e ronting Albania all along. One of the 
most interesting and pathetic things that have been 
happening for years in Albania is that every foreign 
Power could go there and open a school and teach in it 
anything from Manchoo to Siamese, so to speak, but not 
Albanian. Austria and Greece were most anxious to in- 
vade the land respectively from north and south, and 
finally swallow the two halves up. With Greece the thing 
was comparatively easy. Most southern Albanians 
speak Greek fluently (polyglotism is a necessity in the 
congested Balkans and all around them), and besides 
about one-third of the Albanians belong to the Greek 

55 



Church; so the Greek linguistic invasion ran smoothly 
enough. Not so with Austria; the German language, 
even softened by Austrian accents, didn't make such 
easy learning for the people. Then did Austria hit upon 
a clever scheme. She remembered the Venetian ruins 
all over the hills, the welcome shade of the Venetian 
olive groves around Valona, the traditions of the Lion 
of St. Mark; and just as on the Adriatic she had appro- 
priated the Venetian symbol and authority for the trade 
of her "Lloyd Austriaco" steamers, and the Venetian 
mariners for her fleet, just so did she take advantage of 
the familiarity of most of the Albanians, especially of 
the coast, with the Italian language, and proceeded to 
teach Italian in Austrian schools for the Albanian children. 
Whereupon one could hear them sing, innocently enough, 
poor little things, in Italian: "Serbi Dio l'Austriaco." 
(May God keep the Austrian Kingdom), and "Viva il 
nostro Imperator!" (long live our emperor) which was 
rather striking, when one remembered that Italians in 
Dalmatia were suffering gaol and death for wanting to 
speak in their schools the language that Austria put 
herself out to teach to foreign children in foreign soil — 
for her own purposes. 

GREEK WIT OUTWITTED 

And, since we relate anecdotes, let's have one about 
the Greeks too; anecdote is often the soul of history. 
When the international commission was trying to define 
the boundaries of Albania, Greece had resorted to all 
Ulysses' wiles to impress the Commissioners with the 
Hellenism of the disputed soil; even children were trained 
and used for the purpose. At Erseka one child, upon 
being questioned, duly answered in Greek that he was 
Greek and they all spoke Greek and even the family cat 
was Greek, or words to the same effect. The honest 
Britisher in the commission was ready to believe truth 
out of the mouth of a babe, indeed almost a suckling, 
and the rest were about to agree, when the Italian who 

56 



knew the country, and knew that it was Albanian soil 
and not Greek, sharply ordered the Albanian cavas to 
lightly cuff the child's ears; and out of the child's primi- 
tive instincts thus aroused came the unmistakable cry: 
"Nene!" (mother!) in Albanian. Thus was, for once, 
Greek wit outwitted by a descendant of ^Eneas, and 
Erseka was assigned to that part of Albania that also 
contains Santi Quaranta, Delvino, Argirocastro, Les- 
koviki, and so on; that is, the territory presently occupied 
by Italy, and from which (actually from Argirocastro) 
Italy has but recently issued her proclamation of united 
and independent Albania and of the Italian protectorate 
thereupon. And now comes the interesting question: 
What has Italy done with or to Albania? 

ALBANIA MUST BE PROTECTED 

Italy stands by the London Conference of 1913, and 
consequently desires Albania to be an independent unit 
and desires also to prevent her being dismembered by 
her various neighbors or swallowed up as a whole by the 
Austro-Germanic coalition. It is moreover self-evident 
that Italy and the Allies under the present war conditions 
cannot afford to leave Albania alone, which would simply 
mean allowing Austria to settle in a land manifestly in- 
capable of self-defence at the present time and not strong 
enough to bar the gates of the Adriatic at Valona, to the 
enemies of the Allies. Military occupation of certain 
territories, principally the naval base of Valona, and 
political protectorate have therefore been resorted to as 
a measure of safety in the vital interest not only of Italy 
but of all the Allies; and it is equally evident to anyone 
in the least familiar with the political game and not com- 
pletely blind to ordinary human psychology, that who- 
ever starts and keeps up confusing talk upon alleged 
discord of the Allies in this line has an interest in the 
continuance of misinformation and mystification and fur- 
thers the interests of the enemy through the perplexity 
of the public mind. It is the common desire of the 

57 



Allies that Albania shall extend along the coast as far 
as Cape Stylos, thus preventing Greece from holding to 
the disadvantage of Valona both sides of the Corfu Canal. 
And although this is not the ideal realization of all the 
Albanians 5 national aspirations (which include the former 
Turkish vilayets of Scutari, lanina, Kossovo and Mon- 
astic), still it comes within satisfactory range of them, 
and allows hopes for improvement, or, as diplomatic 
Europe calls it, rectification of the situation. With the 
occupation of Valona, Italy has practically barred the 
Adriatic and guaranteed the safety of her unprotected 
coast; more and better, she has prevented Austria from 
settling there, and one may easily imagine what the fate 
of the Allies in the Mediterranean would have been with 
the Austrians at Valona. About as bad, or rather worse, 
than it might have been with the Germans at Salonika. 

Italy's reconstruction work 

Now Valona and Southern Albania may with pardon- 
able pride on the part of Italy be pointed out as an ex- 
ample of what "civilized warfare" can do for a land; in 
other words, how a region can be organized and disciplined 
under military regime, without Prussianism. When the 
first detachment of Italian soldiers and sailors landed at 
Valona there was literally nothing doing in the line of 
modern equipment or sanitation; in fact, epidemics were 
raging through the country, with what danger of diffusion 
the Italian sanitary departments know, who were kept 
busy safeguarding Europe from the invasion of horrors 
greater than those of war itself. iVnd there were thous- 
ands of huddled refugees, destitute and famished, all 
over. Italy went to work, and built four landing stages 
for the unloading of ships on the bare sand. And the 
ships began to unload things. The harbor of Valona is 
surrounded by mountainous cliffs and by marshy bog 
land; and the town is somewhat distant from the shore. 
Roads had to be hewn out of the rock or knocked out of 
the p^'d, and this was done by the Italian soldiers, who 

.58 



found again in service of Italy and civilization those 
Roman capacities for road-building, bridge-throwing, 
tunnelling and so forth, of which America has had so 
many examples in the work of the Italian immigrant. 
Southern Albania possesses now four hundred and fifty kilo- 
metres of wide, solid, permanent roads, besides seventy 
kilometres of Decauville railroads. These railroads and 
bridges had to be built out of nothing, as nothing was 
there, apparently. Quarries were hammered out of the 
mountain-flanks and furnaces built for bricks and mortar 
as the land had nothing available. As for the city itself, 
it has been provided with new streets, a complete system 
of modern drainage and sewerage, gardens and trees. 
In the country around every military post is an agricul- 
tural station, with a supply of agricultural implements 
and teams of oxen for distribution to the native farmers, 
who are taught intensive agricultural work. One hundred 
and twenty schools have been opened and others will be 
by and by, where an Albanian teacher teaches to read 
and write the long-exiled Albanian letters; arid instruc- 
tion in Italian is also on hand, with which language most 
of the inhabitants are familiar, on account of the proxim- 
ity of the Italian coast. It is foreseen that the hospitals 
and other buildings which have been erected by Italy 
will be turned into schools, farms or to industrial pur- 
poses after the war. The national Albanian flag (the 
eagle of Scanderbeg on the red field) flies freely from the 
municipal buildings, and all the customs and religious 
beliefs of the people have been carefully considered and 
respected. 

The same fight for sanitation and civilization is going 
on with characteristic simplicity and absence of advertis- 
ing all over the ground held by the Italian troops, at 
Del vino, at Premeti, at Selenitsa, or, to make it brief, 
everywhere south of the Vojussa River, which is generally 
held to be the ground covered by Italy; precise informa- 
tion beyond these limits being subordinate to military 
censorship. This district at least does not suffer ill- 

§9 



health, nor moral nor material hunger; food-stores, 
schools, hospitals are there; a native police corps under 
the guidance of Italian officials is preparing itself for 
future efficiency; motor-car services connect towns and 
villages and bring the mails; and all the municipal offices 
are in the hands of prominent native citizens. 

And one may reasonably wonder whether conditions 
are in any way to be compared to these, north of the 
Vojussa, and especially where the x\ustrians camp. But, 
then, comparisons will be possible to outsiders when the 
whole of Albania will be freed from the fighting armies 
that now stand on her mangled soil. Meanwhile, Italy 
evidently believes in leaving a trace of civilization and a 
good record for herself where she happens to be. 



(JO 



DALMATIA, FIUME AND THE OTHER 
UNREDEEMED LANDS OF THE ADRIATIC 1 

All the " unredeemed " lands of the Adriatic coast have 
century-old Italian traditions dating back to their earliest 
Latin inhabitants. Even at Fiume, where until recent 
years, the Latin tradition seemed least certain, recent 
excavations have shown that the original seed, which later 
on had such a vigorous fruition, was sown by Rome. 

Geographically not only eastern Friuli and Istria as far 
as the old classic frontier of Arsa, but also Fiume and 
Dalmatia are Italian, for they are situated on this side of 
the watershed which divides the affluents of the Danube 
from those rivers which flow into the Adriatic. 

We shall briefly indicate further on how Italian is the 
civilization of these lands. Culture, geography, and his- 
tory are the factors which detract from the purely numeri- 
cal importance of statistics in those parts where they seem 
unfavorable to the Italians. But even statistics support 
Italian claims in a large portion of these " unredeemed " 
lands despite the systematic bad faith of the Government 
which compiled them. 

FRIULI, TRIESTE AND ISTRIA 

Geography. — The fact that these lands belong geo- 
graphically to the Appenine Peninsula is not seriously 
disputed even by German geographers. The fact has 
been universally admitted for thousands of years. 

The mountains and hills which rise on the further side 
of the Isonzo cannot be said to constitute the geographical 
frontier of a region because the Isonzo, which in its upper 
stretches might seem to form such a boundary, flows 

*A Historical and Statistical Study. Reprinted from the Idea 
Demoeratica, November 11, 1916. 

61 



further down through a plain, and because the great Alpine 
chains stretch much further east, where they take the 
name of the Julian Alps. 

The Julian Alps clearly divide eastern Friuli and the 
territory of Gorizia from the Carniola. The division is 
distinct even as regards the character of the landscape 
which, on this side of the Alps, is thoroughly Italian. 

Starting from Monte Nero the Julian Alps "follow, 
above Idria, the administrative boundary line between the 
coast and the province of Carniola, through the pass of 
Planina-Circhina. From Idria they run, mainly m a 
south-easterly direction, along the heights which command 
the road from Idria to Planina, near the river Uncia, 
dividing Italy from the Slav lands at the central pass of 
Longatico (Unterloitsch) and including, to the west, the 
forests of Tarnova and Piro. From Longatico skirting 
the western heights, they follow the Trieste-Laibach 
railway line as far as Postumia (which they leave to the 
west) following the administrative boundary line along 
the ridge of the Albi Mountains, whence they descend, 
embracing Fiume and some square miles of Croatia, and 
join the sea at about the level of Buccari, opposite the 
head-land of San Marco, which is part of the Italian 
territory." 2 

History. — As stated above the Italian traditions of 
eastern Friuli, of Trieste and Istria as of all other parts of 
Italy, are handed down from Latin civilisation. 

The Roman town of Aquileia destroyed by Attila and 
rebuilt by its patriarchs under the reign of the Lombard 
kings, long held sway over all Friuli (Forum Juli) often 
extending its supremacy not only over the neighboring 
lands of Istria, but even over the province of Trent. 

The temporal power first conferred on the Patriarchs 
of Aquileia, with a donation of lands by Charlemagne, and 
confirmed in 1077 and in 1093 by Henry IV, was abrogated 
by Venice in 1420 but the parliament of the Meliores 



2 Scipio Slataper: "I confini necessari all'Italia." Turin, 1915. 

62 



Patriae terrae Forumjuli continued in existence although 
with limited functions. 

The ecclesiastical patriarchate was abolished in 1753, 
and its lands and revenues were divided between the 
diocese of Venitian Udine and Gorizia, which, two and a 
half centuries before, had been illegally bequeathed to the 
Hapsburgs by the counts of Gorizia, vassals of the patriar- 
chate. 

Trieste, the Tergestes of the Romans, which since the 
fall of the Empire had been a Latin municipality, subject 
later on to the Patriarchs of Aquileia, afterwards to other 
Bishop Barons, to whom it was given as a feud by the 
kings of Italy, at last became a free Italian commune. 
And such it remained until after 1382 when, by fraud and 
violence, this town also was subjected to the dominion of 
the Hapsburgs. 

At the end of the tenth century the maritime towns of 
Istria met with the same fate as Trieste, until they were 
conquered by Venice which held them until her downfall 
in 1797. 

The inland territory of Istria remained under the suzer- 
ainty of the Patriarchate until the thirteenth century, 
when it passed into the hands of the counts of Gorizia 
and was bequeathed by them (illegally, for it belonged 
to the Patriarchate) to the Hapsburgs. 

In portions of this territory the Slav ethnic element 
succeeded in establishing itself as far back as the second 
half of the seventh century; but almost everywhere it 
underwent that inevitable transformation which has at 
all times befallen the barbarians who have descended into 
Italy. A considerable part of the Slavs now settled in 
Istria were imported by the Venetians to repeople terri- 
tories devastated by epidemics, or came there as the 
result of asylum granted to the Bosnian and Morlacchian 
refugees who fled before the Turks. 

But neither the natural migratory movement of the 
Slav populations toward the sea, nor the immigrants 
called thither by Venice — whose indifference to nationality, 

63 



natural in those times, in regard to Istria and Dalmatia 
is well known — would have sufficed to form in the inland 
districts of Istria and in eastern Friuli, a numerical 
majority of Slavs, had it not been for the assistance of the 
Austrian Government, which, impotent to Germanise the 
coast, did its best to Slavify it. Here and there it has 
succeeded in its intent, but the numerical preponderance 
acquired by the Slavs in some parts of eastern Istria, the 
Carso, and the mountainous district of eastern Friuli, is 
but recent and restricted to the rural districts only, 
leaving the culture of these regions what it always has been, 
i.e.y purely Italian. A Slav culture in eastern Friuli and 
in Istria does not exist, and the Slavs themselves can point 
to nothing to the contrary. From Aquileia, glorious wit- 
ness to Roman civilization, to Pol a with its temples to 
Rome and the Caesars, there is not on the coast or in the 
inland districts one single monument which is not either 
Roman, or Venetian, or modern Italian. 

Inhabitants 3 . — The official Austrian statistics for 1910 
return 90,119 Italian speaking inhabitants in eastern 
Friuli. The Slovacs, according to these same statistics, 
number 154,564. A calculation which may be con- 
sidered reliable because it is based on electoral returns, 
gives, on the other hand, the following figures : 



3 In speaking of figures and numerical comparisons of populations 
we should remember to note the great importance of the fact that 
we can only refer to statistics compiled before the war. We are 
therefore discussing a situation which has since been profoundly 
modified, and which owing to these modifications, cannot be used as 
the basis for Italian claims. The Slav population immigrated, 
largely at the instigation of the Viennese government, into Italian 
lands and very probably it will follow this same government in its 
retreat. Thus the Carso today is deserted. How many Slovacs will 
wish to return to this corner of Italy become once more politically 
Italian? At Gorizia there were some thousands of Slavs (Slovacs, 
Croats, Serbs, Poles, Ruthenians, and Bohemians) whom Austria 
had forcibly placed in the government bureaus. Will any of these 
return? It is thus evident that under these conditions figures are 
poor arguments devoid of meaning. 

64 



Italians subject to Austria 112,000 

Italians subject to Italy 8,000 

Slavs 130,000 

Germans 3,500 

According to these figures the number of Italians is 
almost equal to that of the Slavs. But the Italians almost 
all belong to the urban population, they are the more 
highly educated and have therefore a distinctly higher 
national value. So notable is this superiority that even if 
they only numbered 90,000, as the Austrian statistics 
try to make out, the national character of these lands 
would not be changed, for it is and continues to be Italian. 

The very name of Eastern or Austrian Friuli used in the 
official acts of the Vienna government, is proof that 
Goritian Friuli is an integral part of that Friuli already 
united to the mother-country. 

At Trieste in 1910 the Austrian statistics show that out 
of 229,000 inhabitants, 118,959 are Italian, 56,916 Slovacs, 
and 1 1,856 Germans. To convince us that these like all the 
other figures of the Austrian census, are falsified, we need 
only look up the official returns of the 1900 census which 
gave 116,825 Italians, and 24,679 Slovacs. Nor is this 
all : the K. K. Central Kommission filr statistik (of Vienna) 
in 1913 declared that the returns of the Austrian census at 
Trieste exaggerated the number of the Slav inhabitants. 

The truth is that in 1910 the Italians of Trieste, inclu- 
sive of those who could claim Italian citizenship (almost 
all of whom were natives of Trieste) numbered 182,113, 
and the Slovacs who mostly dwell in the hilly section of the 
town, numbered 37,063, of whom over 45 per cent are 
immigrants of recent date. 

In Istria the Austrian statistics place the number of 
Italians at 147,417, Slovacs 55,134, Croatians 168,184. 
It is evident that these figures also need correcting. In 
Istria, as in eastern Friuli, the number of Italians is nearly 
equal to that of the Slavs; but here again the former 
account for the educated section of the population and 
form one national unit, whereas the Slavs are partly Croats 

65 



and partly Slovacs, that is to say they belong to peoples 
speaking different languages. Moreover, almost all the 
Slavs speak Italian and many of them speak dialects so 
full of Italian words that more than one glotologist has 
been in doubt whether to classify them among Italian or 
Slav dialects. 

Considered as a whole, Friuli (Provinces of Gorizia and 
Gradisca), Trieste, and Istria, which are divided by no 
natural barrier and which should, therefore, be con- 
sidered as forming one region, that of Julian Venetia, 
were inhabited in 1910 by over half a million Italians as 
against not more than 350,000 Croats and Slovacs. Nor 
does this take into account Fiume, which likewise forms 
part of Istria and, therefore, of Julian Venetia and where 
the Italians form 65 per cent of the population. 

FIUME 

Geography. — Fiume, situated at the eastern base of the 
Istrian peninsula, belongs geographically to Istria to which 
it belonged politically until 1776. 

The eastern frontier of Istria, which some place at the 
Arsa, the original frontier of the tenth Augustean Region, 
is really formed by the watershed of the Julian Alps which 
descend to the sea at the Canale della Montagna, opposite 
the head-land of St. Mark, near the island of Veglia. 

The boundary line formed by the Arsa had a purely 
administrative value in the time of Augustus; had it been 
the military frontier the Romans would not have built 
further east, for the defence of Italy, the two great Valli 
of the Julian Alps. The majestic ruins of one of these 
works can still be seen, following for some distance the 
course of the Fiumara, a stream which forms the political 
boundary line between Fiume and Croatia. 

But, as stated above, the real geographical frontier 
lies further to the southeast, on the crest of the Julian 
Alps, and includes besides Fiume, the sea towns of Buccari 
and Portore. 

History. — Until February 1914, the origin of Fiume 

66 



was unknown. An arch between two houses in the old 
part of the town, traditionally known as the "Roman 
arch," and the junction on its present location of many 
Roman roads, as shown by the Itinerari and the geo- 
graphy of Claudius Ptolomy, afforded grounds for sup- 
posing it to be of Latin origin. The Italian dialect spoken 
by the native population could only have been a develop- 
ment of Latin, nor could its origin be ascribed to Venice, 
for Venice only governed Fiume for one year, from 1508 
to 1509. 

Nevertheless, many students of local history threw 
doubts on these suppositions, for none of the written 
documents relating to Fiume date back further than the 
thirteenth century. The old chronicles only speak of 
Tarsatica, destroyed in the year 800 by Charlemagne. 

The discovery in 1914 of Roman remains under a house 
which was pulled down on the Corso removed all doubts. 
The majority now incline to identify Fiume with Tarsa- 
tica, rebuilt after its destruction, clear traces of which 
were found in the Roman foundations on which the mediae- 
val city was built. 

The ancient Roman Oppidum, for such Tarsatica had 
been, reappears in the middle ages under the name of 
San Vito al Fiume, known later on as Fiume, a name which 
the Slavs translated by the word Ricka a Croatian word 
for water-course. San Vito is still the patron saint of the 
town to whom the principal church is dedicated. 

Fiume, which was from it foundation a free munici- 
pality, was for some time under the dominion of the Franks, 
after which it became successively a fief of the archbishop 
of Pedana, of the bishop of Pola, of the lords of Duino, of 
the Hapsburgs, of the Lords of Walsee, and then again of 
the Hapsburgs. 

All known documents relating to the city of Fiume bear 
witness to its uninterruptedly Italian character, which 
victoriously survived the Slav invasion in the seventh 
century which, for a time, seemed to have submerged 
everything. 

In 1776 Maria Theresa made over Fiume to Hungary 

67 



and — as a result of the protests of the inhabitants — a 
royal decree of April 23, 1779, proclaimed it to be a 
"separate body annexed to the crown of the kingdom of 
Hungary." 

In 1848 it was taken from Hungary by the Croatians 
of the Bano Jelacic, who held on to it for nineteen years 
without succeeding, spite of tenacious endeavors, in 
undermining its Italian character, and in 1867, on the 
dualistic settlement between Austria and Hungary, it was 
restored to this latter. 

At present Fiume is governed on the basis of a "pro- 
visional arrangement." 

In 1863 the so-called "deputations of the kingdom of 
Hungary, Croatia and Fiume" met at Budapest and 
decided that "the free city of Fiume and its territory" 
should remain, in accordance with the charter of 1779, a 
separate body provisionally annexed to Hungary "corpus 
separatum adnexum sacrae Regni coronae." 

In the first years after 1868 the autonomy and the 
Italian character of Fiume were respected. But for 
nearly twenty years the Italians of Fiume, harassed on all 
sides, struggling against the Croatians and the Magyars 
who have done everything in their power to denationalize 
them, have been engaged in a desperate but so far victor- 
ious fight in defence of their threatened Italian nationality. 

Inhabitants. — The Italian character of Fiume is irre- 
futably proven, even by the government census returns. 

These figures show that in 1910 there were 24,000 
Italians in Fiume (exclusive of some 6,000 Italian citizens 
most of them natives of Fiume), 12,000 Slavs (Croats, 
Serbs, and some Slovacs) and 6,400 Magyars. 

The fact is that before the war at least 35,000 of the 
54,000 inhabitants of Fiume were Italians, that is to say 
65 per cent as compared to 28 per cent of Slavs and 6 per 
cent of Magyars. 

Economically speaking Fiume is of the greatest im- 
portance to any nation which wishes to command the 
Adriatic. Only some 50 kilometers from Trieste as the 
crow flies, and connected up with the railway system of St. 

6$ 



Pietro along which run the express trains from Fiume to 
Vienna and from Trieste to Vienna, this Adriatic town 
could easily gain command of all the commerce of the 
Trieste hinterland. It is therefore necessary that the 
country which is to possess Trieste, i.e., Italy, should also 
hold Fiume. From this point of view Fiume may be con- 
sidered the economic fulcrum of the Adriatic. Without 
Fiume the economic supremacy of Italy on the Adriatic 
would always be unreal. 

Strategically Fiume is of great importance, not so much 
for the command of the seas — for the country which holds 
the Quarnero Islands holds the keys to the Adriatic — but 
because without Fiume Italy would be deprived of the 
natural barrier of the Julian Alps, the only valid obstacle 
to future possible invasions, and the geographic unity of 
Julian Venetia would be disrupted. 

Besides this, it is certain that a hostile fleet assembled by 
some means or other at Fiume (the case of the Goeben 
and the Breslau is instructive) would threaten the rear of 
the Italian fleet and by detaining a portion of it in the 
Northern Adriatic or in the Quarnero, would prevent the 
free and complete movement of the whole. 

Let us add that in time the ship-building yards of Fiume, 
if in hands other than Italian, might build either war ships 
or ships convertible into armed cruisers. In short Fiume 
would contain the germs for the development of a mari- 
time activity which would aim first at rivalling, then at 
injuring, the Italian navy. 

Nationally speaking Fiume may be considered, as 
Rome formerly considered Tarsatica, as an advanced 
sentinel of our race. Fiume is a Latin fortress which has 
withstood for centuries the attacks of diverse peoples; it is 
a centre radiating Italian culture on the borders of Italy; 
it is the eastern vertex of the "fated triangle" (Trieste, 
Pola, Fiume) ; it is one of the three hinges of Italianism in 
Istria. Should Fiume be abandoned to Croatia or to 
Hungary the national character of Istria would be endan- 
gered in the whole of its eastern section. 

And this would be all the more shameful to our nation 



inasmuch as Fiume, when Italy either did not exist 
or could not act, struggled on alone for its national and 
political autonomy. Ever since 1776 when a decree 
annexing the city to Hungary seemed to base this annexa- 
tion on the supposition that the town belonged to Croatia, 
until 1914, Fiume has always asserted its complete 
independence from all connection with Croatia. Until 
the end of the eighteenth century the Croats themselves 
recognized that Fiume did not belong to Croatia. In 
1779 the Chancellery at Vienna recognized indirectly that 
Fiume belonged to Italy. In 1882 that same Chancellery 
denied that Fiume was Croatian. Until the outbreak 
of the European war the inhabitants of Fiume themselves 
continued, amidst struggles and sacrifices of all kinds, to 
repeat this negation. 

The National Committee for Fiume and Quarnero formed 
by exiles, and the many Fiume volunteers now fighting on 
the Carso and on the Alps, afford the latest and most 
solemn evidence of the Italian character of this city. 

THE COAST FROM FIUME TO DALMATIA 

The watershed between the Danube and the Adriatic 
divides the Croatian coast between Fiume and Dalmatia 
from the hinterland. But so inconsiderable is the distance 
which separates this drainage area from the coast that it 
could only be held with difficulty by a state which had not 
possession of the hinterland. 

The coast line between Fiume and Dalmatia extends for 
a length of some 130 kilometers and boasts some good 
harbors which would be more than sufficient for the needs 
of an independent Croatia. 

Segna, for instance (the Senia of the Romans), which, 
like Buccari and Portore, has not yet quite lost its ancient 
Italian character, 4 is not more than 40 kilometers distance 



4 The free commune of Segna had its Podesta as early as the year 
1200, and only thirty years ago Buccari, which is now considered a 
thoroughly Croatian town, according to the census made by the 
Croatians, had 80 per cent of Italian natives. What has become of 
them? It is a fact that all the peasants at Buccari speak Italian. 

70 



as the crow flies from the railway system of Ogulia, as com- 
pared to the 65 kilometers which separate that railway 
from Fiurae. 

This is stated to show that the Croatians — if they have 
possession of their own coast — have not even a pretext for 
claiming Fiume in the name of their economic needs, just 
as Hungary, cut off from the sea by at least 300 kilometers 
of Croatian territory, cannot justly lay claim to that city. 
It should be noted that Croatia's share in the traffic of the 
port of Fiume only amounts to 4 per cent of the annual 
movement and that to reach the port of Fiume the 
Croatian railway has to make a detour which it could avoid 
were it to run to its own sea coast. 

DALMATIA 

Geography. — Dalmatia is an Adriatic territory and as 
such belongs to the orohydrographic system of Italy. 

Throughout the innumerable islands of its archipelago 
it displays the same geological and morphological features 
as Istria. It is clearly divided from the Balkan peninsula 
by a high chain of mountains almost everywhere rising 
above 1500 meters. 

The studies made by Prof. Danielli of Florence on the 
flora and fauna of Dalmatia show that the Dinaric Alps 
divide two very different regions, one of which, Dalmatia, 
preserves all the characteristics of the Italian lands. 

Dalmatia, cut off from the Balkans by the mountains, 
is joined to Italy by the sea, and some particulars, studied 
with great interest by geologists, lead to the supposition 
that the Adriatic, before it became a sea, was a continua- 
tion of the Paduan plain. Even now the Adriatic seems 
less like a sea than a great lake within the territory which 
is bounded to the east by the Julian and the Dinaric 
x\lps and to the west by the Apennines. 

There is only one gate open in this mountain barrier, 
that of the Narenta. But this does not mean that the 
Narenta is necessarily a frontier. South of this river, 
Hertzegovina stretches in two points to the sea, at the 

71 



bay of Neum-Klek, north of Ragusa, and at Suttorino at 
the Bocche di Cattaro. The country which shall possess 
Hertzegovina will therefore have two natural outlets in 
the southern Adriatic. 

History. — Peopled by Tllyrians, with some Greek 
colonies on the sea coast, Dalmatia was Roman from the 
second century B.C. until the fall of the Western Empire. 
Four Roman Emperors were Dalmatian, amongst whom 
was Diocletian, founder of Spalato. 

On the fall of Rome it was in Dalmatia that the Western 
Empire still survived for some decades. 

The Dalmatian cities, prosperous Latin communities, 
governed themselves freely even after the fall of Rome, 
obeying their own laws and statutes which were purely 
Italo-Roman in character, untainted by German barbaric 
feudalism. At first they were under the protection of the 
Roman Empire of the East, and subsequently they became 
independent republics, following the example of the free 
Italian communes. In 1409 they passed definitely under 
Venetian rule, which retained suzerainty over them until 
1797, though they always retained their municipal auto- 
nomy. Like Rome, Venice conquered Dalmatia, deter- 
mined thereto by the absolute necessity of commanding 
the Adriatic, a command essential to t ie life of Italy. 

Ragusa alone remained an independent republic until 
1808. The history of this small republic is truly glorious 
for the prosperity of its maritime trade and the splendor 
of its arts and letters; but here again its history is purely 
Italian, although a characteristic Slavo-Italian dialect, 
the "raguseo" gradually spread among the people. The 
public life of Ragusa was, until 1908, always Italian. 

Toward the year 1000 small Slav principalities arose in 
the inland part of Dalmatia; their rule however never 
extended to the coast towns, which always remained free 
and Italian. Indeed these insignificant Slavonic lord- 
ships soon became Italian, so that Venice was able to 
assume undisputed rule over the whole of Dalmatia. 

In 1855 Dalmatia came under Austrian rule as having 
formed part of the Kingdom of Italy of Napoleon I. 

72 



The French treated Dalmatia as Italian territory even 
when they united it to the brief -lived Illyrian provinces. 

Austria respected the Italian character of Dalmatia 
until 1866; but after the loss of Lombardy and \ enetia a 
policy was adopted which aimed at fostering the Crotian 
element in this region. Little by little, by means of 
unheard of violence and fraud, the municipalities of the 
Dalmatian cities, which had been Italian for centuries, 
passed into the hands of the Slavs; in 1870 Sebenico, in 
1883 Spalato (the last podesta of Spalato, Dr. Antonio 
Balamonti, was a distinguished writer and patriot), in 
1897 Cattaro (podesta Pezzi), in 1899 Ragusa (podesta 
Baron Gondola), and so forth and so on. Courageous 
Zara alone managed to hold out, and preserved intact its 
Italian patrimony and Italian municipality until Austria, 
taking advantage of the present war, dissolved the town 
council. 

But ever since the Croatian invasion of Dalmatia was 
begun, as the several centres of resistence gradually passed 
into the hands of the loyalist Slavs, the government at 
Vienna, and with its consent, and sometimes without it, 
the Slavs themselves, closed the Italian schools so as to 
deprive the Italian populations even of this essential 
spiritual nutriment. Zara alone, proudly withstanding 
all assaults, was able to keep her schools. In all the rest 
of Dalmatia no Italian schools remained except those pri- 
vately supported by citizens at their own expense by 
means of the National Leagues. 

Religion. — Dalmatia, like Fiume, has been Catholic 
ever since the days of the Apostles. The members of the 
Orthodox Church in Dalmatia are about 90,000, almost 
all descendents of fugitives who settled at Cattaro or on 
the Bosnian frontier, driven there by the Ottoman armies. 

Civilization. — Dalmatian civilization is solely and exclu- 
sively Latin and Italian. The eastern Balcanic civiliza- 
tion begins on the further side of the Dinaric watershed, 
which forms the natural frontier between the Balkans and 
Dalmatia. 

73 



The contribution which Dalmatia has in all times given 
to the Italian motherland in sciences, letters, civil and 
military arts, is indeed notable. 

St. Jerome, author of the Vulgate, was a Dalmatian; 
the first Italian grammarian (XVI century was I ortunio 
of Sebenico; the bishop of Trail, De Dominis, a precursor 
of Newton in his solar studies, whose body was burnt in 
Rome in the Campo de' Fiori, was a native of Arbe; Trau 
was the birthplace of distinguished humanists of the 
sixteenth century and the historian Giovanni Lucio was 
born there in 1663. He proclaimed in his works the Latin 
antecedents of Dalmatia and was perhaps the first Italian 
historian who based his studies on purely scientific lines. 
Before his time a powerful Latin mind, the archdeacon 
Tomaso of Spalato, affirmed in the thirteenth century the 
Latin character of the Dalmatian cities, as opposed to the 
Slavs. At the close of the f fteenth century the Latinity of 
Dalmatia found another powerful advocate in Elia 
Lampridio Cerva of Ragusa, a Latin poet who was 
ciowned on the Capitol. Elio Saraca, the friend of 
Ariosto, was from Ragusa; Giorgio Benigno, the friend of 
Lorenzo the Magnificent, was a Dalmatian; the celebrated 
Italian astronomer Boscovitch, is from Ragusa. The 
same town boasts Marino Ghetaldi, the Italian innovator 
in mathematics of the sixteenth century; Baglivi, the great 
Italian medical innovator of the seventeenth century; Seis- 
mit Doda, the Italian economist and minister who resigned 
in 1889 on account of his irredentist opinions when the Triple 
Alliance was in its zenith. Zara gave birth to the natural- 
ists Visiani and Paravia; Adolf o Mussafia, one of the 
founders of Romance philology, was born at Spalato, and 
one of the best known Dante scholars, Lubin, is from 
Trau, while many Dalmatians are well-known literary men 
even at the present time. 

But for the literary glory of Dalmatia it would suffice to 
mention Ugo Foscolo, who received all his early education 
at Spalato, and Niceolo Tommaseo of Sebenico. 

The literature of Ragusa is also nine-tenths Italian, 

74 



although for some years past Serbians and Croatian: — 
exaggerating the importance of some minor poets who 
besides writing in Italian and in Latin also used the Italo- 
Slavic dialect of the town — strive to spread the belief that 
the Ragusa republic is a cradle of Serbian literaure. 

This exaggeration has been carried so far as to proclaim 
these poets and writers as the founders of Serbo-Croatian 
literature. 

As a matter of fact they are only simple and modest 
translators or imitators of their Italian contemporaries. 
Their poetry which grew up and died in Ragusa between the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is a mere Slavic paren- 
thesis in the record of Dalmatian-Italian civilization and 
never had any influence on Serbian and Croatian literature, 
which does not date further back than 1800. The chief 
productions of this over-lauded Slavic literary era are the 
Osmanide, and the Dubravka of Gondola, which are tame 
imitations of Tasso's Gerusalemme and Aminta. And be 
it noted that Gondola, whose name has recently been con- 
verted by the Serbs into Gundalio, was an Italian; all 
the original documents at Ragusa give his name only as 
follows: "Giovanni, son of Francesco Gondola." Equally 
Italian are the names of the other poets (Mauro Vitrani, 
Sigismondo Menze, Giorgio Dersa, Giulio Palmotta, 
Pietro Canavelli, etc.) who, as a historian of Ragusa says, 
made a study of the languages of the bordering peoples. 

Fine Arts. — All the Dalmatian cities, even the small 
towns of the archipelago, are real gems of Latin and 
Italian art. One of the most beautiful is Ragusa, situated 
in a picturesque and highly fertile district. The palace of 
Diocletian at Spalato, and the two cathedrals of Trau and 
Sebenico, the cathedral of Zara, and the palace of the 
Rectors at Ragusa, are undoubtedly real masterpieces in 
the national art treasury of Italy. 

Nor are these specimens of an imported art, but the 
spontaneous productions of Italian artists born and bred 
in the country. The cathedral of Sebenico, the portico 
of the Palace of the Rectors at Ragusa, the chapel of St. 

75 



Anastasia at Spalato, are the masterpieces of Giorgio 
Orsini, known as Giorgio da Sebenico although born at 
Zara; the most beautiful statues and the finest carving in 
the doors of Spalato are pure Romanic work of the Dal- 
matian Guvina; the monumental entrance to the cathedral 
of Trau is by the Dalmatian Radovano, one of the greatest 
Romanic sculptors, a purely Latin genius. 

Orsini, the greatest of Dalmatian artificers, a powerful 
architect and sculptor, is a forerunner of the best forms of 
Renaissance art; the brothers Laurana, one a sculptor, the 
other an architect, pupils of Orsini, and the painter Andrea 
Mendolla of Sebenico, are among the most notable artists 
of our Renaissance. 

Few things offer such vivid proof of the historic Italian 
character of Dalmatia as the innovating and brilliantly 
personal contribution which the two Dalmatian artists 
above mentioned, Giorgio, son of Matteo Orsini, and 
Luciano Laurana his pupil, the architect of the town hall 
at Urbino, and in his turn master of Bramante, made to 
the Renaissance. 

Economy. — The economic life of Dalmatia is almost 
entirely in the hands of the Italian bourgeoisie, and conse- 
quently is part of the national wealth of Italy. 

Landed property in the north and the center as far as 
the Narenta, is two-thirds Italian, and in the islands is 
entirely so. The Slavs are peasants, either renters or 
metayers. And even south of the Narenta there are 
large Italian estates. 

The three leading industries in Dalmatia, the cement 
trade (Spalato), hydraulic power works (Falls of the Kerka 
and of the Cetina at Sebenico and Spalato), and the liqueur 
trade {maraschino of Zara and of Spalato) are almost 
exclusively in Italian hands, representing an investment of 
hundreds of millions of Italian capital. The same holds 
good of the minor industries such as the wax trade, the 
maccheroni factories, the manufacture of insecticides, 
etc., etc. 

In commerce also the more important business houses 

76 



are Italian, and all the ravigation companies have been 
founded by Italians. 

Inhabitants. — As stated above the Italians of Dal- 
matia are autochtonous, the descend nts of Roman settlers 
and of Illyrian (not Slavonic) natives Latinised by the 
Roman conquest. In the fourth century of our era all Dala- 
matia was Latin. The Tchech professor, Jirecek, in his 
" Denkschriften" of the Vienna academy (No. 48-49a, 1901), 
the German Mayer Lubke, and the Istrian Matteo Bartoli 
in the proceedings of the Academy, spite of the wishes and 
requests of the Austrian government, have shown the unin- 
terrupted continuity in the evolution of the Latin language 
and nationality in Dalmatia from the times of the Romans 
to our day. In the middle-ages Dalmatia had a neo-Latin 
dialect of its own, designated by these writers as "neo- 
Dalmatic," later on absorbed and transformed by the 
Venetian dialect which spread all along the eastern coast 
of the Adriatic. 

Until 1898, that is to say not more than eighteen years 
ago, an old man, Antonio Udina, was living at Veglia, who 
still spoke "neo-Dalmatic." 

Thus in the fourth century Dalmatia was still entirely 
Latin, only in the seventh and eig th centuries did Slav 
populations begin to filter in, devastating the country by 
their incursions. 

The Slav immigration was more considerable in the 
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the 
pressure of the Turks. 

According to calculations of that period, the population 
of Dalmatia, including the islands, amounted toward the 
close of the fifteenth century, as shown by the reports of 
the Venetian Provisors to their government, to 60,000 souls. 
As the towns and villages were inhabited by Italians it is 
evident that the number of Slavs then in Dalmatia was 
inconsiderable, and that it was only increased by subse- 
quent immigrations, due to Turkish invasions and to the 
colonizing activity of Venice. 

Undoubtedly Turkey was the prime cause of the increase 

77 



of the Slav population in Dalmatia, driving crowds of 
fugitives to seek refuge from Bosnia; the second cause was 
Austria. Under Austrian rule the number of Slavs in 
Dalmatia has increased three-fold. 

Before the Slav invasion caused by the Turks the Latin 
character of Dalmatia had been strengthened by many 
thousands of Rumanians (Mauro-Walachians, Morla- 
chians) who have now disappeared. It is, moreover, 
evident that all the Rumanian districts in the mountains* 
and the Italian centers in the Dalmatian cities nearest to 
the Dinaric Alps, were first devastated by the Turks 
and then settled by them exclusively with Slavo-Turkish 
people from whom at least two-thirds of the Dalmatian 
Slavs descend. 

At the time of the early Slav immigrations the Italians 
remained in the towns and villages, w ere they formed the 
middle and upper classes. Later on their number was 
increased by Italians who settled there after the Venetian 
conquest and by Slavs Italianized by city life. Only the 
peasantry, out of touch with the middle classes, preserved 
its language. 

And this is still the case; the bourgeoisie speaks Italian 
in home and public life; the peasants speak a Slav dialect 
which they call "our language" and which, with some local 
variations, is a Serbo-Croatian jargon full of Italian 
idioms. 

As a result of the political struggles between Italians 
and Slavs, fomented by Austria since 1886, many middle 
class Italians were induced by economic considerations to 
pass over to the Slav camp. When we are told that side 
by side with the Croats who bear Italian names there are 
Italians whose names were originally Slav, it is necessary 
to draw a careful distinction; the Italians belong to families 
which became Italian during the period of Venetian rule or 
later, but always as the result of a natural process due to 
the Italian environment. But the Croats with Italian 
names are nearly all renegades of the last hour, turncoats 
who went over to the Croatians after 1866, frequently for 
sordid reasons. 

T8 



But in speaking of Dalmatian Slavs we should never 
forget that almost all are Catholics and anti-Serbian, and 
do not wish to be anything but Dalmatian. With the 
exception of a few hundred "intellectual" Dalmatian Slavs 
who are Serbophils, and who are set off by the thousands 
and thousands of "intellectual" Dalmatian Italians, the 
rural masses of Dalmatia are devoid of national conscience, 
and are blindly loyal to Austria for which they have fought 
fiercely during the present war against the orthodox Serbs, 
whom they consider as "pagans." The Dalmatian 
peasants, who were among the best defenders of Venice a 
hundred years ago, will become — when the unnatural 
hatred of everything Italian fomented by the Austrians 
will have subsided — excellent Italian citizens, whereas 
they would never adapt themselves to be governed by a 
people whose civilization is inferior to their o n. 

Thus not even the argument of numbers can be ad- 
duced in favor of the Serbian claims to Dalmatia, claims 
which have been brought forward during the last two or 
three years, whereas the Italian aspirations to Dalmatia 
date back to the year in which that province was definitely 
lost, that is to say to 1815, since when they have never 
subsided. 

How recent are the unjustifiable claims brought for- 
ward by the Serbians to Dalmatia is proved moreover by 
an important and irrefutable historical document. 

The ex-president of the Bulgarian council, Ivan E. 
Ghescioff (Guechoff) published a few months ago a volume 
of papers illustrating the Balkan alliance against Turkey 
in 1912-13 (IS Alliance Balkanique, Hachette, Paris, 1915). 

Needless to say there can be no doubt as to the authen- 
ticity of the documents; the name of Ghescioff (a Russophil 
and friend of the Entente) is sufficient guarantee; nor have 
any denials been published, although the book aroused 
much attention when it appeared. 

Ghescioff, then, with the consent of his King, had a 
conference with the then President of the Serbian cabinet, 
who was also Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milovanovic, 

79 



to lay the foundation for the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance. 
The conference, prepared by the Minister Plenipotentiary 
Rizoff, was held during the night of October 11, 1911, 
on the train between Belgrade and Lapovo. GhesciofT 
now publishes the report of this conference which he 
transmitted to the Bulgarian King and Ministry. On 
page 27 of this report we read these precise words, spoken 
in tete a iete by Milovanovic, formerly Minister Pleni- 
potentiary at Rome, to his Bulgarian colleague (a Jugo- 
slav like himself!): "If, simultaneously with the settle- 
ment of Turkey the disintegration of Austria-Hungary 
were to occur, Serbia would obtain Bosnia and Hertze- 
govina and Rumania would obtain Transylvania." 

Not one word about Serbian claims to Dalmatia! They 
have only just arisen, and they have been fostered . . . 
against Italy! 

And here it is well to remember that Milovanovic him- 
self (then Minister of Foreign Affairs) in October, 1909, 
when interviewed at Belgrade by Dr. Alexander Dudan, 
correspondent of the Tribuna, in the presence of the 
Serbian poet Ducic, now secretary to the Serbian legation 
at Athens, made the following declaration: "The Croa- 
tians of Dalmatia in their anti-Italian agitation, are the 
mere agents and tools of the Austrian police, to make 
mischief between Italy and the Slav world, more especially 
between Italy and Serbia." 

The "Jugoslav" claims to Dalmatia are as recent as 
they are unfounded. " Jugoslavism " is the latest Austrian 
find, which aims at drawing the Serbians within its orbit, 
absorbing them in a triplicist movement (Austria-Hun- 
gary-Jugoslavia). There is no such thing as a Jugoslav 
nation, and there is no history, nor language, nor literature 
which bears that name. The newly-coined word (jug = 
south; Jugoslavi = southern Slavs) is a mere longitudinal 
indication. The people neither knows nor understands 
it. It includes Bulgarians, Serbians, Croatians, Monte- 
negrans, and Slovacs, that is to say five histories, three 
languages (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovac), two re- 

80 



ligions (Orthodox for the Bulgarians, Serbians, and 
Montenegrans; Catholic for the others), five separate 
national consciences. Dalmatia cannot be included in 
any way in this artificial conception of a Jugoslav nation. 

It should be noted that Austria-Hungary founded the 
first and only Royal (King Franz Joseph) Jugoslav Aca- 
demy of science and art at Zagrab (the Croatian capital) 
and that the first Jugoslav press agency was, and still is, 
that founded in Vienna and paid for by the Austrian 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as the " Siidslavische 
Corrispondenz" an agency for the propaganda of the 
Austrian Jugoslav idea, and that the group of Slovac 
and Croatian deputies in the Vienna Reichsrat (parlia- 
ment), presided over by the Austrophil clerical deputy 
Sustersic, the trusted henchman of the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand assassinated at Sarajevo, was and is known as 
the "Jugo Slav Club" (Sudslaven Club). These were the 
three propagandist agencies of the Jugoslav idea which is 
Austrophil, anti-Italian, and anti-Serbian. These are the 
scientific and artistic, political, and press organs which 
represent all the political and intellectual activities of the 
Southern Slavs. 

In short, the few Croatian and Slovac agitators who, 
under the retext of Jugo-Slavism tour the capitals of the 
allied countries, carrying on a propaganda directed more 
especially against Italian aspirations on the Adriatic, and 
decrying our country, our army, our navy, and our institu- 
tions cannot — spite of the high sounding titles of deputy 
and ex-podesta which they make so much of, be said to 
represent either the Croatians or the Slovacs of Austria- 
Hungary, and still less can they be said to represent the 
friends or the allies of the Entente. This is so because, in 
the first place, until the European war broke out these 
very agitators were the instruments of Austrian policy 
directed against Italy and against Serbia. 

In the second place, because the very Croatian and 
Slovac political parties to which they belonged until the 
outbreak of the war, and their political colleagues (presi- 

81 



dents of provinces, and of provincial parliaments, deputies 
and podestas) still continue, after two years of war, to be 
the agents and servants of the Austrian and Hungarian 
governments; they still continue to support Vienna and 
Budapest, and consequently Berlin, in the war against 
Italy, Russia, Serbia and all the Allies. We will here 
mention as samples of the Croatian parties which still 
support the Austrian government, the Hrvatska stranka 
(the Croatian party in Dalmatia, presided over until the 
beginning of the war by M. Trumbic, now president of the 
Jugoslav Committee of London and Paris) the Srpsko- 
hrvdtska Koalicija (the Serbo-Croatian coalition in Croatia, 
founded, amongst others, by Messrs. Supilo and Hinkovic, 
who together with M. Trumbic are now the leaders of the 
Jugoslav Committee). 5 

All these Croatian and Slovac parties are in full accord 
with the Croatian and Slavonian troo s who fight for 
Austria-Hungary against the armies of the allies. And 
here we must remind the reader that Croatia enjoys a 
large measure of autonomy und r the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy and has its own territorial militia, or Landwehr, 
entirely Croatian from the private to the commander, and 
the bulletin of September 26, 1916, of the Austrian General 
Staff stated that this Croatian Landwehr was fighting 
heroically in the Transylvanian Alps against the Ruma- 
nians, whereas it is well known t' at t e Italian and 
Tchech soldiers, incorporated in mixed regiments of the 
Austro-Hungarian armies, have always deserted when 
they could from those hated ranks. 

In view of these facts it should be remembered that the 
Italians of the "unredeemed" provinces have always con- 

6 In the Journal des Debats of November 25, 1916, Mr. Trumbic 
signs a manifesto of the Jugoslav Committee as "President of the 
Serbo-Croatian parliamentary commission in the Dalmatian Diet." 
This is another lie, and an international one! . . . There never has 
been a "Serbo-Croatian coalition" either in the Diet or in the coun- 
try. Mr. Trumbic was only the President of the Croatian clerical 
party "of the right" and, later on, of the Croatian governmental 
party in Dalmatia, known as Havatska atranka. 

m 



sistently followed an anti-Austrian policy, and even that 
section which, like the clerical party in the Trentino, 
seemed more tepid nationalists, as soon as the Italians 
declared war on Austria proclaimed their nationalism in 
no uncertain terms. Not one of the political organs of the 
Italians has been respected by Austria; all have been dis- 
solved, all the leaders have been interned as enemies of 
the State; even the Hon. Coaci, the leader of the clerical 
party in the Trentino, and ex- vice-president of the 
Austrian Chamber, and the Prince-Bishop of Trent, 
Mons. Endrici, have shared this fate. 

During the war Dalmatia has given Italy a number of 
volunteers, and the first martyr of the irredenti, Francesco 
Rismondo of Spalato, on the outbreak of hostilities, gave 
up his family — wealthy shipowners, who had joined the 
Austro-Croatian party — enrolled himself at once in our 
army, and fell seriously wounded on the Carso. He was 
taken prisoner by the Austrians and executed by the 
hangman of Franz- Joseph. 

Assuredly none of us would consent to sacrifice these 
heroic brothers of ours to the tricks of a few Croatian and 
Slovac political agitators. 

The Austrian census, drawn up by Austro-Croatian 
agents, only returns 20,000 Italians out of a popula- 
tion of 6*20, )00 inhabitants. But there are at least 
60, >r M) Italians in Dalmatia exclusive of those who are 
Italian subjects. This figure is obtained from the elec- 
toral returns for 1911 in which the Italian candidates 
obtained 10 per cent of the total poll. And, be it remem- 
bered, the Italians only voted as a matter of principle but 
without hope of success; which would lead us to suppose 
that the number of Italians is yet more considerable. The 
Italian speaking inhabitants amount to 200,000, and it may 
be said that the only Dalmatians who do not understand 
Italian are the illiterates who can neither read nor write. 6 



6 Those who raise conscientious objections with regard to the Slav- 
speaking populations who would be embodied in greater Italy, 
would do well to remember the two million German speaking 
inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine who will return to France, the three 

83 



Strategical Considerations. — Dalmatia is essential to the 
safety of Italy on the Adriatic. And, be it noted, we say 
Dalmatia and not only the islands, which it would be 
impossible to defend economically and strategically if 
they were divided from the mainland. Such a division 
would be a national injustice to the Dalmatians, and a 
source of constant unrest. 

The Catholic Dalmatians are confirmed adversaries of 
the Serbs. All who are acquainted with the real condi- 
tions of this province know that the dread of a Serbian 
nationalist movement in Italian Dalmatia is absurd. The 
vast majority of the Slavo-Dalmatian population has 
always been opposed to the Serbians, and, as is shown by 
innumerable facts, to all union with Croatia. 

But if Dalmatia were to remain separated from Italy, 
the Italian nationalist movement, which has always 
existed, would continue to subsist, and would become all 
the more vigorous, passionate and turbulent as the growing 
importance of Italy would render its ideal ever more vivid, 
intense, and fascinating. 

It must be remembered that from a military standpoint 
the coast is the key to power on the Adriatic. Pola is of 
importance only for the protection of Trieste and Fiume, 
and its value is defensive. 

The ports which are valuable for an offensive against 
the Italian coast are the two formidable harbors of 
Sebenico and Cattaro. The islands are only the outlying 
works of those ports. 

The present war has clearly demonstrated this fact. 
All the attacks against our shores have been made from 
those two ports. The numberless traps and snares which 
those two ports can lay among the islands and the channels 
which divide them, paralyze the activity of the allied 
fleets in the Adriatic. So true is it that the islands are of 
no avail against the power which holds Sebenico that the 



to four million Germans who will form part of the future kingdom 
of Bohemia, the Germans of Poland, the Bulgarians in Serbian 
Macedonia, the Turks and Greeks in Constantinople and Asia Minor, 
to mention only the transformations of the near future. 

84 



allies have not taken the trouble to occupy even one of 
them. 

In conclusion, the purpose of Italy is not to defend her- 
self against a danger which threatens her in the Eastern 
Adriatic but to do away once and for all with that danger. 
Her purpose is to secure for herself absolute freedom in 
her own sea. 

Like Rome and Venice, Italy needs Dalmatia to ensure 
her peace and safety. 

CONCLUSION 

Italy, after defeating Austria-Hungary must claim all 
the lands embraced between tie Adriatic and the Julian 
and Dinaric Alps, i.e., eastern Friuli, Istria with Trieste 
and Fiume, and all Dalmatia; whils 4 leaving to the Croa- 
tians and to the Serbians commercial ports of their own on 
the Adriatic. 

BIBLIOGRAFHICAL NOTE 

G. Lucio. — De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae, Amsterdam, 1666. 

D. Farlati. — Illyricum Sacrum, Venice, 1751-1811. 
Dalmatien, lectures by Professors of the Vienna University, 1911. 
G. Kobler. — Memorials of the Lyburnian city of Fiume, Fiume, 

1896. 
Virginio Gayda. — Italy beyond the Frontier, Athenaeum, Rome, 

1915. 
A. Tamaro. — Italians and Slavs on the Adriatic, Bocca, Rome, 

1914. 
Id. — Spalato, Bemporad, Florence, 1916. 
A. Orefici. — Dalmatia, id. id. 

E. Burich. — Fiume, Rava, Milan, 1915. 
A. Dud an. — Dalmatia and Italy, id. id. 

Id. — The Monarchy of the Hapsburgs: Its Origin, Greatness and 

Decline. 2 Vols. Bontempelli, Rome, 1915. 
Dalmatia by several writers; Formfggini, Genoa, 1915. 
A. Bernardt. — Istria and Dalmatia, with illustrations, Arti 

grafiche italiane, Bergamo, 1915. 
A. Tamaro. — The Adriatic, an Italian Gulf, Milan, Treves, 1915. 
Id. — The condition of the Italian subjects of Austria in Julian 

Venetia and in Dalmatia, Rome, 1915. 
T. Sillani. — Ports of the Motherland, illustrated edition, Alfieri 

e Lacroix, Milan, 1915. 
Italicus Senator. — La question de VAdriatique (2 edition)— 

Rome, 1916. 

85 



ITALY AT THE PIAVE 

By Diana Watts 

January 2, 1918 

Official communications are practically powerless to 
convey any true understanding of a national disaster. 
This is the case in connection with the recent tragic 
events on the Italian front — and it occasionally happens 
that an unimportant unofficial person who has lived 
through such events, is able to change entirely a point of 
view resulting from preconceived notions. 

That there exists already a generous desire on the part 
of America to help her lly cannot be doubted. The 
proofs exist in the shape of immense hospital supplies, 
trainloads of which left the Paris branch of the American 
Red Cross immediately after the dis ster on the Italian 
front — and in many other ways which daily augment in 
importance. 

But only with actual contact is it possible to realize 
the spirit of a people or appreciate the changes wrought 
by disaster and grief — it thus happens that accounts 
written by private persons who have actually lived 
through moments of national disaster are able to transmit 
a far truer impression than any number of official dis- 
patches controlled and restrained for political reasons. 

This is the object of the present article, which endeavors 
to make clear a few essential facts which appear to be 
unknown in America. It is still not uncommon to hear 
Italy blamed for her delay in entering the war, and for 
her selfishness in choosing the moment most convenient 
to herself. 

The facts prove that these accusations are absolutely 
groundless. Italy's situation at the outbreak of hos- 
tilities was an extremely complex one, which probably 

86 



accounts for its having been little known and less under- 
stood. The treaty binding her as an ally of Austria and 
Germany, was a purely defensive one — it precluded en- 
tirely any act of aggression on the part of any one of the 
three countries concerned, and at the moment of extreme 
tension which followed the declaration of war by Austria 
upon Serbia, Italy and England, by their special positions 
were the balancing powers of each party. France and 
Russia were definitely bound by treaty to uphold each 
other. England, though tied by no treaty, was morally 
bound to side with France. 

Germany and Austria had secretly agreed upon a 
definitely aggressive policy, and in the initial stages of 
the conflict, when there seemed to be some faint chance 
of averting general hostilities, England on her side con- 
ferred with France and Russia, as a friend counselling 
reflection and caution, while Italy made representations 
to her two allies emphasizing the illegality of any aggres- 
sive action under the existing treaty of the Triple Alliance. 

When Germany actually declared war against Fr nee, 
Italy was as completely ignorant of, and unprepared for 
such a move, as the rest of the world, and although the 
tre ty which bound her to Austria and Germany had only 
recently been renewed the first important step she took 
was one of withdrawal from any share in the action, and 
a denunciation of her Hies. 

This withdrawal was a tacit proof of sympathy with 
the Entente powers, but she did more than this — she in- 
timated to France her willingness to withdraw all troops 
from the Franco-Italian frontier, and passed her word of 
honor, allowing the French to liberate a number of their 
troops and cannon which contributed largely to the 
allied success at Verdun. 

Had Italy made no protest, and had she allowed the 
weight of her help to go against the Allies, by attacking 
the French in the rear, she would have assured a victory 
to the Central Powers in a very short time. 

This was Italy's first help to the Allies, not only an 

87 



unselfish act, but one of great courage and daring, which 
earned for her the bitterest hate from the two countries 
she had denounced. 

As to the moment chosen for openly declaring her alle- 
giance to the Hied cause, it must be remembered that 
Italy had only recently emerged from a long and exhaust- 
ing war, which had left her depleted in every department 
of her army, yet, notwithstanding this, she managed to 
reorganize and replenish her forces in the incredibly short 
time of a few months, and in spite of the fact that she 
was even then not ready, she declared war against Austria 
at a moment when Russia was suffering a succession of 
defeats, thereby creating a diversion of troops which 
greatly relieved a strain growing in intensity. Her de- 
claration of war upon Germany, which followed later, 
had the same beneficial result on the French front. 

These are simple incontrovertible facts, and recapitula- 
tion brings out two salient points — Italy, by refusing to 
take part in the unprincipled acts of aggression of Ger- 
many and Austria, made her first stand in favor of the 
Allies. By her open denunciation of these acts, and her 
entry into the war at the moment chosen, she created 
diversions which contributed very largely to allied 
successes. 

These facts have been overlooked — or never under- 
stood — but they constitute the strongest claim for sym- 
pathy and help from those whose cause she was fearless 
enough to espouse, and for which act she had paid in a 
disa ter directly conceived and planned as vindictive 
revenge by her former allies. 

But there are always two sides to a medal — that which 
bears the imprint of the tragic disaster of October 23 is 
graven in lower relief than that which depicts the upris- 
ing of an awakened spirit which followed almost immedi- 
ately after the first effect of the blow. Until this disaster 
came, Italy was not united in her interpretation of the 
words "National Honor." The majority of the people 
were satisfied with the successful efforts of their army 

88 



to reclaim the long lost territory of the Trentino. The 
army, valiant as it was, had not been thoroughly tested. 
The record was practically one continuous advance 
against an enemy hard pushed — Austria was fast approach- 
ing the moment when she would be powerless to offer 
any serious resistance to the oncoming wave of Italians 
across the Bainsizza plains. It was almost in Italy's 
power to force a peace with Austria. Trieste was in 
sight with all that its conquest meant for the allied 
fleets, and the destruction of the enemy's largest sub- 
marine base — when the Russian defection from the '< Hied 
cause made possible the help that Austria had been en- 
trea+ias: f r m G rma^y. 

The result of that help we all know. The magnitude 
of it, and the price exacted by Germany from her ally 
are known only to a few even in Italy. The maximum has 
been quoted here as nine divisions. There were seventy- 
two German divisions, roughly speaking about a million 
men, without counting the Austrians, Turks and Bul- 
garians — a concentration of force far exceeding that which 
has hitherto been employed on any one front. Even this 
force would have been powerless to overcome the defenses 
all along the mountain crests, had it not been for the 
treachery of the few, who, coerced by smooth promises of a 
speedy peace if they would lay down their arms and 
refuse to fight, enabled the Germans to enter one of the 
narrow passes, cut the telephone communications, and 
ta 1 e 200,000 t ris ners in hree hours. This peace prop- 
a r anda was disseminated largely by the clericals and 
the unruly section of the socialists, who dwelt upon the 
certainty of obtaining peace if only the soldiers would 
refuse to fight, keeping carefully clear of the fact that the 
reward for this inaction would be a bullet in the back., or 
starvation in a prisoners' camp behind the German lines. 

Many of the men who had succumbed to the pernic ous 
influence of the insidious propaganda, fought to the death 
when they realized tfce awful disaster, sacrificing them- 
selves in the vain effort to check the inrushing hordes — 

89 



hut it was too late — a dark night — heavy mists — a new 
and more deadly type of poison gas — no telephone com- 
munications — and the open door of the pass — these com- 
bined to create a panic, and many Italians were shot by 
their own men. 

After the first ghastly shock had subsided, the super- 
human courage and determination with which the rem- 
nants of the poor second army sacrificed themselves 
almost to a man to allow the retreat from the Bainsizza 
plains of the whole of the third and fourth army, stands 
out as a brilliant page in the history of the war. The 
Bersaglieri and the Alpini are immortalized. 

It was known from the first moment of the retreat that 
the line of the Tagliamento could not be held as permanent 
defense — but a temporary stand there acted as a check to 
the onrush of the hordes who had never, never expected 
the success which fate had allowed them. Even luck was 
with them, for when the Italians reached the Tagliamento 
it was in flood; when the Germans arrived it was dry, and 
they were able to walk across! It was the same with the 
Piave, with this difference, that although almost dry when 
the Germans arrived, they did not get across. The line 
was held, and will be held — even in those early days they 
said, "If we can hold the Piave for a week we can hold it 
for a year." 

What depended on the holding of that line was realized 
by only a few. The Germans, drunk with the success of 
their intrigues, were loudly proclaiming that they would 
be in Milan in a week. The faint-hearted and the pessi- 
mists took up the refrain, and the first week was fr ught 
with terror. Only two days before the disaster, Cadorna 
had cabled to Rome: "Our defenses are impregnable; we 
are ready for the attack." On the actual day of the 
tragedy no bulletin came through, but private telegrams 
had spread the news; and the day after, a short bulletin 
came from Cadorna announcing that the line had been 
broken; that it was the fault of his soldiers who had not 
held firm. Many, who up till this moment had been his 

90 



strong upholders, judged him for the fatal mistake of 
putting the blame on his soldiers for what he, as general- 
in-chief, should have foreseen and forestalled. 

It was also part of the disaster that General Cadorna 
had made a bitter enemy of General Capello, commander 
of the second army, and unfortunately only one of the 
many antagonistic leaders who had suffered from his 
overbearing authority. The fact also of his being ex- 
tremely bigoted in his religious views was unfortunate, 
considering the vigilance needed to counteract the peace 
propaganda emanating from the Vatican. 

Two, three, four days passed with laconic telegrams 
from Cadorna, supplemented by the arrival of trainloads 
of refugees from Udine in pitiable condition, rich and 
poor alike having been forced to fly at a moment's notice, 
bringing tales of horror and suffering. A fund was 
started in Rome which in five days reached 900,000 
lire. This from Rome alone! Other funds in Milan and 
Genoa reached much higher figures, and all this with 
literally no outside help — just from the Italians them- 
selves. All houses opened their doors freely to the 
refugees many of whom refused to accept money, saying 
they were able and willing to work immediately. There 
were many cases where the coachmen of the public cabs 
who conveyed the refugees from the station to the houses 
ready to receive them, refused to take any fare, offering it 
as their contribution to the general fund for relief. 

After the first shoe of the news had passed, a reaction 
of determined resist nee set in, led by a group of old 
GaHbaldfcns far b yond -h r mo st are lim't w o 
demanded permission to go to the front, which was 
accorded. Companies of mutilated soldiers insisted on 
returning, and were accompanied to the different stations 
by cheering crowds. All officers away on leave came back 
without a moment's delay. Italy, though torn with 
anguish and shame, was rising to the call of her real spirit — 
waking to the dawn of a clearer understanding of the 
sacrifices demanded of her. At first, despair was the 

91 



keynote — many said that never again could an Italian 
hold up his head before the world. To have spent two 
years in regaining the long lost Trentino — to have spilt 
the blood of her finest sons only, to lose it all in a week! 
In that moment of despair it seemed impossible to them 
ever again to vindicate the national honor. 

It seemed no comfort to be reminded of the stupendous 
blunders of Italy's more powerful i Hies. Yet did anyone 
now regard the disaster of the Dardanelles as anything 
but a foolish mistake? Did anyone now speak of the acts 
of treachery which had been by no means infrequent both 
on the English and French fronts? 

And was this misguided act of a comparatively small 
number of soldiers to be compared to the wholesale 
treachery and intrigue recently exposed by the fearless 
determination of the present French government, and 
which existed under the Caillaux regime? 

Tragic as tlese things have been at the time, they 
were but incidents in the great struggle, incidents that 
have been dimmed by many an heroic deed of individual 
and national expiation. 

The first interminable week of the Italian retreat ended 
to find them making a determined stand at the Piave, 
although in those early days it was thought not improbable 
that it might have to be withdrawn to the Adige, even 
to the Mincio. Germany had counted on that and 
expected to be in Milan in a week. The Italian Chamber 
was to open on November 10, and quite regardless of the 
feelings of her dly, Austria, Germany had planned a 
master stroke. 

Reckoning on her arrival in Milan before the opening of 
the Italian Chamber, she was preparing the most subtle 
bait for the Italian people. It was to take the form of a 
proclamation notifying her readiness to cede to Jtaly the 
whole of the Trentino with Trieste — in return for a separate 
peace — and had this dream ever been realized, Italy would 
have faced the danger of a revolution had she refused to 
accept terms which to the ignorant majority would have 
seemed the logical conclusion of the war. 

92 



But as usual, Germany miscalculated — she did not 
reach Milan; she was held at the Piave — met by Italians 
with an awakened understanding of their true enemy — 
met by the fusion of individual resistance and determina- 
tion into a throbbing national solidarity. 

The conditions which Germany intended to offer to 
Italy at the expense of her ; lly can never be exacted, for 
they presupposed conquest and non-resistance as usual, 
but the line of the Piave held — and will hold. The 
morale of the troops has returned. The spirit of the best 
impregnated the whole, and was expressed in the words of 
one of the officers, who said: "They may drive us back 
to Rome and from Rome to Sicily and from there to 
Tripoli, but we will never make a separate peace" — 
almost these same words were repeated by the Hon. 
Orlando in the Chamber on December 26. 

The sublety of the means employed to sow the seeds of 
defection among the troops was proved by the discovery 
that facsimile copies of three leading journals — the 
Corriere delta Sera, the Giornale a 1 ' Italia, and the 
Maiiino of Naples — had been secretly printed, apparently 
exactly the same as the real journals, but small para- 
graphs had been inserted telling of revolutionary out- 
breaks in Milan, Alessandria, Naples, and Palermo, in the 
hope of encouraging discontent among the troops. Still 
more typical was the discovery that owing to the generous 
freedom allowed to Austrian prisoners in Sardinia, t ley 
had been able to find out an immense number of names of 
the men at the front to whom they sent anonymous post- 
cards with the poisonous news that their wives had been 
unfaithful — sure means of breaking a soldier's spirit. 
But the days passed — it is now eight weeks that the 
Piave has held held by spirit alone — for from a military 
point of view it was thought untenable. 

The Italian soldiers have awakened once more to a 
belief in themselves, have risen to the heights of divine 
sacrifice, lifted by the spirit of unity which has been 
born of the tragic disaster. A wave of returning con- 

93 



fidenee passed over the whole country like wind before 
the dawn. 

No one who was not in Italy during those first three 
weeks after the events of October 23 can realize how 
strong was this wave which came from the depths of the 
national spirit shaken with grief and shame. 

Italy is young as a nation, disaster came like a thunder- 
bolt from the clear sky of successful achievement — the 
most dangerous moment — but it has enabled her to prove 
her true spirit, heroic and undaunted, it is the "quarto 
risorgimento." 



94 



ITALY AND THEjWAR* 
By General Emilio Guglielmotti 
Military Attache to the Italian Embassy 

Ever since the outbreak of the European war, Italy, 
mother of civilization and law, classic land of all liberty, 
has felt that her place could not be on the side of autocracy 
and barbarism. Bound to the Central Powers by reasons 
vital to her existence and security, and particularly by an 
unjust and dangerous boundary line imposed upon her 
in 1866 by her ancient enemy , Austria, Italy had concluded 
a purely defensive treaty of alliance, which she at once 
perceived should, ipso jure et facto, be considered null and 
void on the day in which the two major allies, without 
even consulting her, provoked a war of aggression, of 
conquest and of oppression. Italy felt that she should 
not, for the sake of material advantages offered to her by 
the Central Powers, join them in crushing France and 
England to whom she was bound by common ideals. 
Italy could not, therefore, be content with a pure and 
simple declaration of neutrality, but was moved by 
fraternal duty to reassure France, her Latin sister, so that 
she would have no reason for hesitating to strip her 
Italian frontier and transfer to the point then menaced 
by the Huns, the troops removed from the Alps; troops 
which made possible the glorious victory of the Marne. 

When the rapid march of events forced Italy to take up 
arms for her liberty, for her very existence, for the great 
common cause of justice and law, it was already established 
beyond question with which side she should cast her lot. 
Her traditions, her sentiments, her history designated her 
course in no uncertain manner. Even though not com- 
pletely prepared, in May, 1915, with the immediate pur- 

*Written for the Yale Review on November 20, 1917, and published in the issue 
of January 16, 1918. 

95 



pose of relieving the pressure on the Eastern front, at a 
moment in which the Central Empires were elated by their 
■uccesses against the demoralized Russian armies, Italy 
declared war on Austria; and, in August, 1916, as if to 
demonstrate to the world her unity of purpose to the 
Allies, she declared war on Germany. 

For two years the Italian armies struggled against the 
most formidable natural difficulties that the whole theatre 
of the war presented disposed along a front longer than the 
Belgian, English and French fronts combined. Yet, in 
spite of a frontier which exposed them to every peril and 
gave the enemy every advantage, the Italians won victory 
after victory against the largest and best part of the 
Austrian army, advancing slowly but steadily into enemy 
territory, menacing the very existence of the Dual Mon- 
archy. 

This constant cind wearing pressure which she found 
herself unable to resist induced Austria to turn for help to 
her more powerful accomplice, Geimany. The latter, 
after the Italian offensive of last summer, saw the peril 
approaching her own threshold across Austria, and 
realized that, if Austria were defeated, it would be a 
serious blow at her own existence. She, therefore, 
granted the humble but insistent demand of her vassal, 
and, gathering a great part of the contingents which the 
internal situation of Russia allowed her to take from that 
front, she launched a strong offensive against Italy with 
combined German and Austrian troops reinforced by 
Bulgarians and Turks, making an army of at least sixty 
divisions. 

The Austro-German offensive had a double purpose, 
political and military. 

From the political aspect, Germany was conscious of the 
great difficulty against which the Italian nation struggled : 
unprovided with money and insufficiently stocked with 
coal. Germany counted upon the unrest and exhaustion 
following a long war, upon the political strife which self 
interest made her exaggerate and foment, and especially 
upon the pacifist propaganda which she conducted with 

1*6 



such ability, according to her insidious and treacherous 
custom, both among the people and in the army, to 
provoke a revolution in Italy and force the nation to 
submit to a German peace. 

From a military point of view, Germany expected to 
crush Italy quickly and, made more formidable by such 
victory, she hoped to concentrate the united strength of 
Germany and Austria for a blow against France and 
England. She expected to penetrate to the heart of 
France by a new route across the plains of the Po and the 
Maritime Alps and to put France beneath her barbarous 
yoke before the United States could intervene. 

The actual result of this double offensive is already a 
matter of history. 

Politically, the profanation of Italian soil has rallied 
to one standard all the energies of the nation against the 
invading Huns. Never as in this moment, in the face of 
the perilfrom without, have Italians of every political faith 
of every class, of every region, felt their brotherhood so 
intimately, so indissolubly. Gathered around their king, 
their flag and their government, they have indeed proven 
to the barbarians that they are first and last Italians. A 
single cry, the ancient cry expressive of the great passion 
for national entity, of a high desire for life, for inde- 
pendence, for liberty, has resounded from shore to shore 
of the peninsula: "Fuori i Barbari." 

Speaking from the military standpoint, Italy can today 
affirm with a good conscience that she has for the third 
time and with her own blood saved not only her cause, but 
also the cause of the Entente. 

This is not the place to discuss the reasons for the first 
Italian reverses. We cannot now judge how much was 
due to the powerful pressure of the enemy forces, the 
crushing superiority of their artillery, the insidious prop- 
aganda of the enemy, the shameful ruse >of enemy 
officers who wore Italian uniforms and used the language 
learned from us when they were guests at our universities 
in time of peace, to throw our ranks into confusion. But 
everything indicates that the oft-lamented disadvantages 

m 



ot frontier imposed on Italy forced the hasty retreat of 
troops not actually engaged to prevent their being flanked 
and cut off. The retreat thus courageously and quickly 
determined upon by the supreme command, in spite of 
regret at abandoning in an instant lands so laboriously 
conquered in thirty months of sacrifice, suffering and blood- 
shed, might have been checked at the Tagliamento or 
Livenza, along the rear lines already prudently prepared 
for defense. But these lines were stripped of artillery, 
because the scarcity of guns had forced Italy to bring 
them all forward to support the first line, and today it is 
absolutely impossible to hold a defensive position without 
strong artillery support. The only hope of safety and 
ultimate recovery was to place between the invading 
army and the Italian forces the greatest distance with the 
greatest possible speed. And the Italian soldiers retired 
to the Piave. Putting aside every consideration of art 
and sentiment the cold military critic might find that the 
line chosen which did not even eliminate the handicap of 
the double front on the North and East had fewer of the 
requisites for defense and counter-attack than other lines 
farther in the rear. But Italy felt the high duty which her 
traditions placed upon her, and a clear vision of the fact 
that she could not assume before the world the responsi- 
bility of abandoning a priori without an effort to arrest the 
barbarian hordes, cities of such historic and artistic 
value as Verona, Vicenza, Padua and above all, Venice, 
which would have been victims without doubt of the 
destructive fury of the invaders. And at the Piave Italy 
halted the Huns. 

The glorious episodes of this retreat are already known, 
how units without guns left behind to cover the retreat of 
the main bodies and retard the enemies' progress generously 
sacrificed themselves to the last man to fulfill their duty 
to their country; how other units completely surrounded 
fought to the death, refusing to surrender even in hopeless 
struggles. 

The real index of the morale of the army, the valor of the 
Italian soldier, the soundness of organization and disci- 
pline in the great mass of the troops, is the long, magnifi- 

98 



cent, efficient resistance which they made immediately 
following an unexpected and tragic retreat, rapidly 
executed under the crushing impetus of the hostile armies. 
Fighting on the mountain and river fronts, outnumbered 
perhaps five to one, confronting fresh troops constantly 
relieved, the Italians unaided for more than a month 
repulsed every attack. 

At first the enemy assaults were launched impetuously 
and continually in the attempt to break the Italian lines 
which were not yet consolidated, lines held by units which 
in the rapid development of events had not time to halt 
and reorganize. Then, calling reinforcements from the 
three other fronts, and bringing up the heavy artillery 
which Italy almost entirely lacked, the Huns tried with 
new and fierce blows from the North to break through into 
the plain. But once more the Italian soldiers, suffering 
heavy losses, but inflicting a terrible toll on the invaders, 
fighting without cessation night and day, attacking with 
bayonets and rocks when ammunition was exhausted, 
repulsed every attack and prevented the enemy penetrat- 
ing our lines, flinging in their faces the ancient cry of the 
Alpine warriors, adopted afterward by the French soldiers 
at Verdun, "Di qui non si passa!" 

Soon France and England, realizing the stupendous 
enemy plan, sent their brave troops to Italy where they 
were joyously acclaimed by the Italians as the concrete 
evidence of their brotherhood in arms and the unity of 
their cau se. The Italian troops consented to be relieved by 
the Allies in some places along the first lines of defense and 
to take a well-earned rest after having halted alone the 
Austro-German advance. 

Meanwhile the great American republic, which had 
promptly sent Italy aid in supplies and money, likewise 
declared war on Austria, thus giving to Italy new proof of 
her sympathy and to the world new evidence of her desire 
to defeat the enemies of liberty in every time and place. 
The common ideals, the just cause, the proven valor of 
their soldiers will bring sure victory to the nations of the 
Entente. God is with them! 

99 



THE BATTLE FOR VENICE* 
By Walter Littlefield 

I have been asked to say a few words on the Battle for 
Venice. By all the laws of logic and strategy I should be 
talking about the battle for Laibach, possibly for Vienna. 
For by September 1, Cadorna had shown the way to 
those battles, just as Napoleon 120 years ago had shown it. 
But questions of tactics and of politics have, meanwhile, 
intervened, and so I am constrained to speak about the 
Battle for Venice. 

With Germany's well known propensity for holding her 
nearest and strongest foes and attacking her most remote 
and weakest — with Serbia overwhelmed, Rumania crushed, 
and Russia forced into neutrality with the aid of the Bol- 
sheviki — it was natural that she should turn her attention 
to Italy, and, taking advantage of the lack of complete 
cooperation which still prevailed among the Allies — of 
the insidious conspiracies which were going on among 
their people for a dishonorable peace — attempt to render 
hors de combat Austria's most redoubtable foe and pos- 
sibly attain thereby an entrance to the back door of 
France. 

Austria herself had already tried to do this in May and 
June, 1916, when she made a drive from the Trentino into 
the Regione di Veneto and reached Asiago on the Sette 
Comuni. Then, however, flanked from the Val Sugana 
in the northeast and from the Astico in the southwest, 
she was hurled back with the loss of between 80,000 and 
100,000 men. 

But the German attack was different. Austria struck 
at Italy's weakest front, at her strongest point, hoping 
thereby to reach Vicenza and the railway system which, 

*Address delivered under the auspices of the British War Relief Committee, at 
"Hero Land," on Italian Day, December 1, 1917. 

106 



through Udine, fed the Italian Second and Third Armies 
on the Isonzo and the Fourth Army guarding the passes 
through the Carnic Alps. She also hoped to reach 
Brescia, the industrial and metallurgic center of Italy to 
the southwest, and force a peace at Rome, having, mean- 
while, thrown wide open the back door to France. 

What Germany did was this: She struck at the weakest 
point on Italy's strongest front and then waited to apply 
the Austrian strategy of the year before. 

In his operations last August east of the Isonzo, Cadorna 
had almost severed the Austrian line along the Ciapovano 
Valley and had come within 35 miles of Laibach. In the 
north his line lay across the slopes of Monte Nero, from 
Plezzo to Tolmino, a distance of 103^ miles, like a string 
to the bow of the Isonzo which, between these two points, 
bends westward. In the middle ground his line curved 
over the Bainsizza Santo Spirito, on a 10-mile front with 
a penetration of l}/2 miles. In the south only the volcanic 
pile of Hermada blocked the way to Trieste across the 
Carso. 

Obviously, the front was exposed at Plezzo and Tolmino, 
and on the Bainsizza, from the Idrio on the north and 
from Monte San Gabriele and Monte San Daniele on the 
south. Besides, at Tolmino the Italians had never 
crossed the Isonzo, being prevented by the bridgehead 
formed just south of the city by Monte Santa Maria and 
Monte Santa Lucia on the right or western bank. 

At these weak points, therefore, Germany struck. Her 
preparation was, as usual, characteristic. The Italians 
on the sector across Monte Nero had not been relieved for 
over a year. These had begun to fraternize with the 
Austrians. The Pope's peace note of August 1 was made 
use of. There were forged copies of Italian papers telling 
of starving women and children in Naples and Genoa who 
had been fired on by British mercenaries. The Socialist 
Camorra of Ferri and the Pacificist Camorra of Giolitti 
also got in their fine work, and, when all was ready, Italian- 
speaking Bulgarians surprised the telephone stations at the 

101 



outposts and said that orders had been received from 
Udine for a retreat. 

The trap was sprung on Sunday, October 21. I do not 
think that at first the Germans had any expectations of 
performing the invasion which ultimately resulted. But 
having secured an initial advantage they pressed it for all 
it was worth. The Russian situation had permitted the 
release of forty-seven Teutonic divisions from the Eastern 
Front. At first six of these were used, then thirteen, then 
forty in all. At first Germany used the bogey of Mackenzen 
to frighten the Italians, but von Below was really in 
command. 

Now the Regione di Veneto, north and east, has five 
natural lines of defense — the right banks of the Taglia- 
mento, of the Livenza, of the Piave, of the Brenta, and 
of the Adige. The Brenta flows through the Val Sugana 
in the Trentino; the Adige flows directly through the 
Trentino. Both the Brenta and the Adige enter the 
Adriatic south of Venice. A retreat to these lines would 
mean the loss of the Pearl of the Adriatic. 

Well, Germany struck — at Plezzo, at Tolmino, and on 
the north of the Bainsizza. From Plezzo she entered the 
valley of the Natizone; behind the Santa Maria and Santa 
Lucia she crossed the Isonzo and entered the valley of 
the Judrio; this maneuver practically enveloped the 
Italian line lying across the slopes of Monte Nero and 
thousands of Italian prisoners were taken and hundreds of 
guns captured. Worst of all, however, it exposed the 
rear of the armies stretching across the Bainsizza and 
the Carso, and a general retreat was begun — a retreat 
magnified by daring acts on the part of the Italians who 
were made to realize the truth of Virgil's line: "Una salus 
victis, nullam sperare salutem." 

Of the Veneto lines of defense, that of the Tagliamento 
had been fortified in the spring of 1915, just before Italy 
entered the war; that of the Piave had been later utilized 
for a terrain of practice trenches. It will be seen that the 
Second and Third Armies retreating from the Isonzo 

102 



could not proceed very far westward before exposing the 
rear of the Fourth Army in the north. 

So the Fourth Army also began to retreat. When it was 
out of the Val Sugana, Germany revealed the full scope of 
her strategy. She struck south from the Trentino and 
occupied Asiago, on the Sette Comuni. But now, unlike 
the situation in the summer of 1916, Asiago could not be 
flanked from the Val Sugana. Thus Asiago was on the 
rear-left of the retreating Fourth, Second, and Third 
Armies, and on the rear-right of the First Army lying 
along the Val Terragnola before Rovereto. Similar to the 
Asiago advance another descended between the Piave 
and the Brenta as far as the slopes of Monte Grappa. In 
the east the Germans reached the Piave. 

But no further. Here the Italians have raised the cry 
of the French at Verdun: "On ne passera pas — Da qui 
non si passa!" 

And now, whatever may have been the causes which 
allowed Von Below to effect an entering wedge and however 
the retreat of the Italian armies to the Piave may be 
criticised, one luminous fact stands out as bright as day. 
It is this: By September 1, Cadorna had demonstrated 
to the world, as Napoleon had done 120 years before, that 
the way to defeat Austria was across the Isonzo and 
through the Julian Alps. And it is a matter of political 
knowledge that, with Austria defeated and placed in the 
inevitable chaos of a social revolution, the military power 
of Germany would collapse. 

Why, therefore, was this unequalled condition not taken 
advantage of by the Allies? Here we are brought face to 
face with considerations which have never obstructed the 
German High Command — political considerations. What 
are these political considerations? I really do not know. 
Yet I am informed that they exist and that they are very 
formidable when any attempt is made to have unity and 
concentration of forces on the part of the Allies. They 
kept Greece from attacking Turkey when the approaches 
to Constantinople were defended by a handful of soldiers. 

103 



f hey were responsible for the Gallipoli fiasco, for the 
Serbian disaster, for the chaos in Russia. They have 
closed the eyes of military experts and have so far rendered 
immune the Lorraine sector and the Heligoland naval 
base. They occasionally permit cooperation, but never 
unity of strategy, of tactics on the part of the Allies, and 
that concentration of forces, that coordination of supplies, 
that one supreme executive which are so necessary to 
victory, and which have been Germany's from the first. 

A better day se°med dawning a fortnight ago when a 
Triune General Staff was established for the conduct of the 
war in Italy — with Foch, Wilson, and Cadorna. But 
nothing came of it. Political considerations intervened. 
And so today we find the forces of England and of France 
which have entered Italy busily engaged in fortifying the 
Adige and the Po so as to protect the back door of France, 
when they should be on the Piave bearing victory for the 
Allies through the front door of Italy! 

And political considerations will probably keep up 
until the end of the ineffective battles of attrition in 
Flanders — the mere gaining of territory which could much 
better be recovered from a beaten Germany at the end of 
the war than on the battlefield. And all oblivious are 
these political considerations to the glaring fact that the 
battle line from the North Sea to the Adriatic, with vast 
salients in Lorraine and Veneto, is the interior of a curve; 
that while it takes Germany more than a week to move 
troops from Flanders to Veneto the same thing can be 
accomplished by the Allies within forty-eight hours. 

This is a tactical, a topographical truth which needs no 
demonstration. The corollary needed to make it yield 
victory for the Allies is very simple. It is this : One 
front, one army, one supreme command. 



m 



THE PROBLEMS OF VICTORY* 

By Hon. Medill McCoemick 

Representative from Illinois 

*********** 

Then the Imperial Staff struck their adversaries again, 
this time on the right flank, in Italy. There is no mystery 
about that blow. In order to understand it we have only 
accurately to estimate the weakness and the strength of 
Italy, her achievement, and her failure, and the respon- 
sibility which we share with her European allies for her 
recent defeat. Italy, strong in man power but weak in all 
other resources, had done well. Some of her troops had 
been proved the equal of any in the French and British 
Armies. She had driven the Austro-Hungarian forces 
slowly eastward in the face of the great natural obstacles. 
All observers praised the organization with which she 
maintained her front in an incomparably difficult country. 
You must bear in mind that Italy labored under great 
handicaps. 

In a war which is primarily industrial, Italy producing 
no iron and no coal, received from abroad even less than 
her normal imports. Her shell factories, which should 
have been working night and day, were working but part 
time. In spite of her lack of war material she pushed the 
enemy to the north in the Trentino and forced him east- 
ward on the road which runs past Trieste to Laibach. 
She was seeking the old Napoleonic route to the heart of 
the Hapsburg monarchy. Ah! If she had been supplied 
with the resources to have driven through it! When 
I was on that front, Trieste was before our eyes. There 
were but two barriers between us and the highway to the 

♦Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives. Monday. 
January 7, 1918. 

105 



plains beyond. The sons of the Roman road builders had 
woven over the rocky and precipitous desert a network of 
splendid highways the like of which are not to be seen on 
this continent. Along those highways, for miles, in iron 
pipes, they carried water for the parched armies and com- 
pressed air for the tools to drive galleries, to drill out 
tunnels, to cut roads across the faces of sheer cliffs. But 
for lack of ammunition her advance was stopped. 

The Austrians were weakening. Italian officers told 
me of the capture of Turks among the prisoners, Turks 
summoned by the Imperial German staff to the help of 
faltering Austria. As Italy pushed painfully toward the 
eastern edge of the desert country her difficulties increased. 
Her advance had been stopped because she lacked shells. 
For want of shells and guns her long flank on the north was 
weak. When I was there Hungarian divisions of real 
worth, together with German guns and German divisions 
from the Russian front, were being assembled for the 
drive which the Italians even then anticipated. They 
knew that they were in danger. 

Sir, people were troubled by our course. They asked 
why we had joined hands with France and Britain and 
not with them, whose ideals and purposes were the same 
as those of the other western democracies. They asked 
why we had differentiated between the modern Hohen- 
zollern autocracy and the more ancient, more obscurantist, 
more reactionary, and more tyrannical Hapsburg. 

Italy expected the attack, but she did not look for the 
cowardice and treason of some of her divisions, which had 
been corrupted by the imperial spy system developed — in 
Italy as in America — while Italy stood by and watched 
the other democracies fight. They threw down their guns, 
those divisions, and Italy with her line broken had to fall 
back to the Piave. 

There is a little satisfaction to be gained from the know- 
ledge that the imperial staff achieved no great strategic 
success in Italy when they drove their enemies back to the 
line of the Piave. They made a political foray primarily 

106 



for its moral effect and to relieve the pressure in the main 
theater of the war. Both these results they accomplished. 
They cured Austria-Hungary of despair. They marched 
Italian prisoners through the streets of Berlin and restored 
the faltering faith of the German people in the invincibility 
of the Hohenzollern. They compelled the British and 
French to detach divisions and guns from the western line, 
where they were gaining, to assist the Italians in the plain 
of the Po. 

If America and the Allies can profit by the lesson, we 
may yet count the German drive into Italy as a disguised 
blessing. Every thinking creature can now see, what too 
few saw before, that the front from the Adriatic to the 
channel is a common front. [Applause.] It is 700 miles 
long. Three hundred miles of it lie between the Alps and 
the Adriatic; 400 miles between the channel and the Alps. 

There are about seven Italians under arms for every ten 
men in the combined French and British armies in France 
and Flanders, so that the number of men is about equally 
proportioned to the lengths of the two great sections of the 
western line, but there is a great disparity in the distribu- 
tion of guns. Even before the Italians lost a third or so 
of their cannon, the enemy on the Italian front faced less 
than one-quarter as many guns as he faced in the hands 
of the British and the French. 

If America and the Allies can learn anything from the 
past, if America awakens and does her full duty in the 
manufacture of vast numbers of cannon, Italy with her 
millions of infantry can be armed by us with the great 
weapons necessary to repeat on the Piave what transpired 
on the Marne. [Applause.] 

When the drive into Italy was checked, for simple and 
cogent reasons, the Imperial Staff turned from Italy to 
France. 



107 



ITALY AND THE REAL VILLAIN* 
By Will Irwin 

I begin this on a day when the Italians are fighting 
along the line of the Piave River, trying to hold back the 
Austrians from the immortal stones of Venice, when the 
western passes into the imperiled land are filled with 
French and British troops hurrying to what may be a 
decisive battle in Armageddon. The disaster that fell on 
the fine, able Italian Army is now more than three weeks 
old. Entente Europe has recovered from its first shock 
and is beginning already to see a way out. At first, to 
us who watched the preliminary stages of the great Aus- 
trian drive, who saw the fugitives begin to stream down 
the Venetian Plain, and who witnessed for a fortnight the 
sorrow of Rome, it seemed an irrevocable tragedy. It 
was a tragedy, at best; though now we know it was not 
irrevocable. A right understanding of that tragedy is a 
lesson, a most pertinent and useful lesson, to us Amer- 
icans in our present relation toward this war. For that 
reason I set about telling as much as I know and can 
publish with honor about the events of the past few 
months in Italy. 

I cannot, however, give true point to the story with- 
out going back and dragging the reader through a few 
paragraphs of history and social philosophy; for Italy, 
like all the other European countries, finds her present 
linked irrevocably with her past. Young and fluid as 
we are, we can often, in crises like this, divorce ourselves 
in a day from our past with all its customs and traditions. 
They on the other side of the water cannot do that; and 
the link with their past is sometimes a great strength 
with them, and sometimes, also, a great weakness. 

♦Reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post. Copyright, 1918, by The Curtis 
Publishing Company. 

108 



Italy, then, of all the powers engaged in this war, is the 
oldest people but the youngest nation. Her tradition of 
high civilization runs back through twenty-five centuries. 
Her corporate existence as a nation was broken, between 
the dying years of the Roman Eastern Empire and the 
movement for United Italy, by a thousand years of dis- 
ruption. The race, during that period, remained intact 
in blood and virtually in speech. But politically the 
nation was broken up into a series of cities; some, like 
Venice and Florence, carving out for a time little princi- 
palities of their own in the surrounding territory; some 
never pretending to any domain outside the city walls 
and the surrounding fields. Her history during those 
thousand years is written in terms not of a people but of 
municipalities. One thing alone survived — the uncon- 
querable spirit of a race that breaks more commonly into 
genius than any other we know. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF UNITED ITALY 

The forlorn hope of a United Italy, of a strong people 
welded and self-governing, took form in the middle of 
the nineteenth century; and action began when Garibaldi, 
with his band of wild revolutionaries, captured and lost 
Rome in 1848. That was a noble failure — the Bunker 
Hill of United Italy. For ten years more the north was 
divided between the loyalist Italian House of Savoy and 
Austrian tyranny, the center was held by the Papal 
States, and the south festered under King Bomba's King- 
dom of the Two Sicilies — probably the most incompetent 
government of modern times. Garibaldi, the Liberator, 
came back in 1859, with his thousand, and performed the 
miracle of taking Sicily — a thousand troops, armed with 
condemned muskets, against thirty thousand regulars! 
Miracle followed miracle, so that historians are still 
puzzled to account for subsequent events. Most of 
them, indeed, beg the question, and lay it to luck, for- 
getting the unbeatable combination of four men with 
genius — Garibaldi, the wild Liberator; Cavour, the subtle 

109 



statesman; Mazzini, the persuasive agitator; and Victor 
Emmanuel, the strong king. At any rate, within the 
year United Italy was formed — after a fashion. 

The Papal States, however, still held much of the 
center, and Austria much of the north, including Venice. 
In 1866 Germany fought Austria; and Italy, with the hope 
of getting her own, combined with Germany against her 
hereditary foe. Garibaldi almost had his hands on 
Trento, last Italian outpost city in the mountains, and 
Cadorna, the elder, was about to take Trieste, when 
Germany, having quickly beaten Austria, withdrew her 
support and left Italy stranded. As a sop, Bismarck 
gave her part of the northern provinces held by Austria; 
and in the subsequent settlement she took over Venice. 

United Italy waited four years more. In 1870 Ger- 
many and France went to war. Taking advantage of 
the situation, Italy seized the Papal States, which had 
been protected by Napoleon III of France. Her bound- 
aries came to be as we know them in the school geogra- 
phies and United Italy was a reality. Not until then 
could she be considered a nation; for the period between 
1860 and 1870 was so full of wars, rumors of wars, diplo- 
macies and perils that no time was left for the real work 
of welding and organizing. She had, then, when Arma- 
geddon broke, only forty-four years of true national 
existence. 

Now, she had begun with nothing — no armies or 
navies or finances or developed resources — nothing but 
the will to be a free and united people. In her vicinity, 
and vitally interested in her affairs, as the rattlesnake is 
interested in the gambols of a bird, were three reactionary 
nations who had all these necessities of empire — the 
monarchial France of Napoleon III, Austria, and the 
Prussia that was becoming greater Germany. In her 
foreign policy, conducted by a series of most able and 
subtle ministers, she could afford only one steady objec- 
tive — to hold herself together and keep her own, without 
war if possible; for she could not afford another war. 

110 



She had special problems, unknown to the youth of such 
a nation as ours. One was what the Italians call cam- 
panalism — the town spirit as opposed to the national 
spirit. "In the beginning," an acute observer of Italian 
life said to me, "we were not like a piece of welded metal, 
as a nation should be. We were like marbles in a box." 

HAPSBURG TYRANNY 

Again, there was the problem of the Clerical Party — a 
large body of voters, including a most able element, 
refusing, for conscience's sake, to participate in the 
affairs of the nation. With her one ideal of national 
unity and national existence before her, she must take 
from the international situation simply what she could 
get, while she welded and built toward internal strength. 

All this explains why Italy found herself, in the course 
of a few years, bound in an alliance with a nation against 
which a great part of her people held an old grudge, a 
nation whose scheme of government she despised, whose 
rule she had hated — Austria. 

We Americans have been so busy with the crimes and 
shortcomings of Germany that we have paid little atten- 
tion to Austria. As a matter of fact, if Germany is now 
the main villian of the European tragedy it is because of 
superior ability, not of worse intentions. The patch- 
work kingdom has just emerged from the barbaric stage 
of open and professed absolutism. Under the German 
leadership, established since 1866, the Austrians have be- 
come good administrators, as they were not when they 
held dominion over Northern Italy; but they are and 
always have been political tyrants toward the stranger 
peoples whom they are warping into their system. 

Old imperial Russia herself has no such record of polit- 
ical executions — "The Hangman" was the Italian nick- 
name for Francis Joseph. One governor of an Italian 
district in the Irredenta had on his record two thousand 
hangings on charges of political conspiracy. In the early 
part of the nineteenth century, when they were trying to 

111 



reconcile the Venetian province to their system, they 
supplemented the rope with the scourge. Whipping to 
death was very common. Half a century is a short time 
in the European memory; and all Northern Italy re- 
members those days with intense hatred. 

The Hapsburg dynasty is, if anything, more reaction- 
ary than the Hohenzollern — hard, narrow, sure of its 
belief in the divine right of kings and of all other things 
reactionary. The parliament is regarded by the throne 
and its supporters as a mere concession to keep the people 
quiet. And at one side sits the army, a force sinister and 
powerful. The Austrian corps of officers is a kind of 
Pretorian Guard in organization and feeling — loyal only 
to itself and the emperor's person; wholly out of sym- 
pathy with the life of the people. 

Discipline in the Austrian Army was always brutal and 
barbaric; the officers justified it on the ground that they 
had many races to control and must stamp out the faintest 
sparks of disloyalty. This whole army outlook on life, 
politics and war is summed up in a conversation re- 
ported to me by an Italian friend, who was once a teacher 
in an Austrian university. He and an officer fell to de- 
bating on politics and the future of the Eastern European 
world. 

"We'll have to fight you some day," said the Austrian; 
"there's no one else to fight! We can't fight Germany — 
the alliance is too close. We can't fight Russia — alone. 
There's no one left but you." 

"Why fight at all?" asked the Italian, quite naturally. 
"Oh, but we must fight now and then!" replied the 
Austrian. "You see, in peace parliaments and democ- 
racy and all that hog foolishness get a foothold. We have 
to allow the people their sport. When that goes far 
enough we have a war and get our grip again, and things 
go as they should ! " 

Such was and such is the troublesome and hated north- 
ern neighbor of Italy. More than a border, and the re- 
sentments engendered by a border, divided them — the 

112 



whole, irreconcilable difference between the autocratic 
spirit in which Austria still gloried, and the democratic 
spirit in which United Italy was born and nurtured. 

Bismarck it was who, in the final settlement of 1870, 
set the boundary between Austria and Italy. He was 
the evil genius of the nineteenth century — this Bismarck; 
the world, including his own Germany, is paying now for 
his wickedness. But he thought far, far ahead. In the 
defeat of Austria he saw a chance not only for a united 
German Empire but also for a powerful, permanent and 
always subservient ally. 

To that end he did not, as he might have done, add all 
the German districts of Austria to the new empire. He 
left in Austria a strong nucleus of German-speaking 
people, in the expectation that they would come to govern 
the patchwork empire, and govern it in harmony with 
German plans. In that expectation he was not disap- 
pointed. Though Hungary has proved rebellious and 
dangerous in later years, Germanic Austria has retained 
its grip; in the pinch of Armageddon it has bent the whole 
empire to the dominant will of Imperial Germany. 

THE CRAFT OF BISMARCK 

Such being his policy, Bismarck did all he could to 
strengthen Austria against foes from without, and especi- 
ally against the new, rising Italy. With that end in view 
he drew the frontier of 1866-70; and drew it in such a 
manner, we know now, as to insure future trouble. 

Between the hereditary home of the Italian people and 
that of the Austrian peoples runs the barrier of the Alps — 
all the way, virtually, from Switzerland to the Adriatic. 
For five-sixths of the distance these great mountains form 
a tangle of peaks, range parallel to range, like that bulge 
in the Rockies which one notes on the maps of Colorado. 
For the rest of the distance the Alps run down into foot- 
hills, ending with the stony, bald and broad hill desert 
of the Carso — a position almost as valuable, for defensive 
purposes, as any mountain range. 

113 



Now a really just boundary, insuring military protec- 
tion to both sides of the frontier, would have run through 
the middle of the Alpine mountain tangle and the Carso 
desert. It happened, also, that this was in still another 
way the just boundary; the natural flux and reflux of 
races had arranged that matter long before. For north- 
ward, up to that imaginary boundary, ran a population 
exactly as Italian, in blood, speech, tradition — every- 
thing — as the peoples of Lombardy or the Venetian plain. 
Trento, in the mountains, held herself as Latin, in every 
sentiment and feeling, as Verona, on the other side of the 
mountains; no less than Venice herself did Gorizia, in 
the oasis of the Carso, feel herself a part of the old Vene- 
tian Republic. 

But Italy, in the scheme of Bismarck, must have no 
military parity with the future vassal state of Austria. 
He drew the boundary across the southern edge of the 
mountain tangle. Here and there, as the crazy line 
wriggled along the Alps, it granted the Italians the favor 
of one thin screen of peaks — faced always on the north 
with rank after rank of superior heights. 

The valuable passes all went to Austria. As the line 
emerged into the lower country, toward the Adriatic, it 
deviated from the mountain line onto the plain. The 
foothills of the Alps, the desert of the Carso, the deep and 
easily defensible Isonzo, were all Austrian. 

"There are many doors to Italy," said an Italian 
officer to me last year, "and Austria holds the key to 
them all. If we wish to enter we must use a battering- 
ram." 

So this situation remained for forty-four years, during 
which Italy passed from resentment to a kind of forced 
toleration. The problem of Italia Irredenta — Unre- 
deemed Italy — troubled the Italians less, perhaps, than 
the question of Alsace-Lorraine troubled France. For 
Alsace and Lorraine were kidnaped from the motherland 
within the memory of man, while these lost provinces of 
Italy, though hers by right, had not been hers in deed for 

114 



a thousand years. She had performed such miracles of 
recovery in her glorious burst of the nineteenth century. 
She had so much to do internally that this problem could 
afford to wait. 

Also, it seemed for a time that the Irredenta problem 
had reached a half solution. A dawn of liberalism had 
begun, it appeared, in Austria. Nominal parliamentary 
government had been granted; freedom to use their own 
tongue, to live without discrimination in their own way, 
had been accorded the Italians of Southern Austria. An 
Irredentist party, pressing the claims of their enslaved 
brethren, still existed in Italy; but it formed a small 
minority. 

So, following her policy of playing any and every game 
that would grant her security for internal development, 
Italy, within fifteen years after her birth as a nation, had 
formed an alliance with Austria. As Count Neri said, 
Italy and Austria had to be either enemies or allies. And 
this measure, it was felt, afforded still more security to 
Italia Irredenta. Surely Austria, who valued this alli- 
ance for her own ends, would not persecute the blood 
brothers of her allies as she was persecuting the Czechs 
and other subject races who had none to take their part ! 
Austria nursed this illusion by granting still more freedom 
to her Italian subjects. Just as lightly did Italy enter 
the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. Indeed, 
this move had at the time the general approval of Europe. 
It created and maintained the balance of power, that 
impermanent foundation on which the armed camp of 
Europe managed to keep the peace for thirty years or 
more. 

GERMAN MONEY IN ITALY 

And Germany, bound to Italy by the Triple Alliance, 
proved for a long time of real value to the rising little 
kingdom with her great internal tasks. German methods 
and German machinery helped in the great industrial 
renaissance at the north, which has placed Milan, Turin 

115 



and Brescia among the most efficient manufacturing com- 
munities in Europe. 

Early in the game Germany introduced, through the 
Banca Commerciale and other houses, her advanced sys- 
tem of banking, whereby the bank becomes a partner with 
the man who needs money to develop his business. In 
a thousand branches of business she made Italy a profit- 
able customer. Hotel keeping is a mightily important 
asset to Italy, whose old monuments and works of art 
form a great commercial asset. 

Everywhere the Germans wormed themselves into the 
hotel business, introducing modern methods that drew 
wealth into the country. 

There was no historic quarrel between Germany and 
Italy, as there was between Austria and Italy — even if 
Bismarck did juggle that frontier. Since United Italy 
became a dream, the two nations had never been at war. 
Toward Austria there had always been hatred of the bit- 
terest variety, especially in the north. France had been 
an open enemy many times. Napoleon I rent the coun- 
try apart and divided it between his relatives and his 
marshals. 

Napoleon III, even though he was their friend for a 
few months in 1859-60, had taken Rome from Garibaldi 
in 1848; his armed protection kept the new kingdom from 
occupying the Roman provinces between 1860 and 1870. 

The average Italian perhaps failed to understand that 
France was a different Power since she founded the Third 
Republic in 1870; Armageddon had been going for a 
year before most Europeans separated the sheep from the 
goats, realizing which nations had gone over the demo- 
cratic ridge and which lingered in the shadows on the 
wrong side of the hill. But Germany had always seemed 
a friend. Hardly anyone in Italy, outside the well-in- 
formed diplomatic circles, perceived that she was the 
real villain of the drama, the prologue of which was 
being played even then; that Austria was to figure as the 
cat's-paw. 

116 



Then Armageddon broke. The Triple Alliance pro- 
vided that every member of the agreement should sup- 
port the others in case they were attacked. Now the 
Germans have slapped much camouflage over the causes 
of this war. But everyone in every European chancel- 
lery knew that Germany had been waiting and working, 
during several years, for a general assault on the liberties 
of this world, and that this was the moment. The 
Italians, who, under the Triple Alliance, had been watch- 
ing their neighbor's game from the inside, knew it best 
of all. The German cry "We are attacked!" simply 
brought grim laughter from the Quirinal. 

An anxious week passed, however, before the govern- 
ment, responsible, as in all democracies, to the people, 
felt sure that it might be allowed to act on its own in- 
stincts and its own plans. The people spoke decisively. 
Liege had not fallen before the Socialists passed resolu- 
tions declaring that they would never consent to an at- 
tack on France. Privately or publicly, nearly every 
other organized force of public opinion spoke to the same 
effect. 

The government conveyed assurances to Paris that 
Italy would remain neutral. This enabled France to 
draw a whole army away from the Italian border and to 
win the battle of the Marne with it. Really the Ger- 
mans, who knew exactly what they were doing and knew 
that Italy knew, never expected support from the junior 
member of the Alliance; but this prompt reassurance to 
France, with its decisive effect, was a disagreeable sur- 
prise. Then Italy sat still — and thought. 

Long before Armageddon, friction had been growing 
with that enemy ally, Austria. Whether by policy or 
by virtue of a passion for political tyranny impossible of 
long suppression, she was breaking her tacit pledges 
toward the Italians of the Irredenta. The noose and the 
whip had been brought out of the museums and were at 
work again. 

The really decisive moment, the true occasion, in the 

117 



opinion of many minds for the present war, occurred in 
1905. As a concession to her ally, Austria had consented 
to the creation of an Italian-language university in the 
Irredenta. Suddenly she suppressed it utterly ; and grad u- 
ally she began a process of forced Germanization. The 
sparks of nationality had been burning low in the Trentino 
and Trieste. This blew them up into a sullen, smolder- 
ing flame. The Italians of the north said among them- 
selves that, at the first opportunity, they must have a 
third war of liberation to get back their own. 

SYMPATHY WITH FRANCE 

Still, I think, Italy would never have gone to war for 
the Irredenta alone, any more than France would have 
gone to war for Alsace-Lorraine alone. An old, old 
people, the Italians are very complex; they do nothing 
for simple causes. First, there was the Belgian outrage 
and the gradual perception that this was a war of democ- 
racy. Then there was a feeling for England, whose 
diplomacy and whose volunteers had helped so much in 
the creation of United Italy. Finally, there was France. 
"And," says one of my Italian friends, "no one on this 
peninsula is indifferent to France. Some may dislike 
her and some like her; but none is indifferent." 

One element especially liked France — the intellectuals. 
Between French thought and Italian thought, in art, 
science, philosophy and government, there has always 
existed a burning sympathy. True, in the Germaniza- 
tion of parts of Italy, German thought had taken a hold 
on some of the universities. The Italian intellectual re- 
sented that. "Teaching Dante by rule of thumb, per 
Bacco! " said one of this class to me before the war began. 
"Four years spent in reconstructing texts and not five 
minutes in contemplating his beauties!" So most of the 
Italians felt; the diamond-hard, diamond-bright thought 
of France was their birthright as Latins, not the preten- 
tious, posing and unilluminated thought of Germany. 

It was these intellectuals who made United Italy in 

US 



the beginning. In Garibaldi's immortal thousand, who 
took Sicily and lighted the torch, there was scarcely one 
peasant; there were few men of affairs or of business. 
They were poets, painters, village attorneys, school- 
masters, university students — even clergymen. The in- 
tellectuals rose again. D'Annunzio, with that enormous 
prestige a poet has in Latin countries, took the stump. 
Caesare Battisti — afterward caught and hanged for 
treason by the Austrians — came down from Trieste and 
urged the claims of Unredeemed Italy. The Garibaldis, 
grandsons of the great Liberator, heritors of a name like 
that of Washington with us, threw in their powerful 
sentimental influence on the side of intervention. 

These intellectuals, the true cause of Italy's war, 
joined hands with a small party against which, in other 
times, they might have fought most ardently. This was 
the Nationalist, founded at the time of the Tripolitan 
War, with the idea of a Greater Italy. The aristocracy, 
generally held back; all aristocracies in neutral Europe 
incline a little to the Central Powers. But, except in 
minor centers, the aristocracy is aside from the current of 
Italian life. 

GIOLITTI AND HIS PARTY 

The main opposition, indeed — and an honorable one 
enough — lay in the political powers that were. For a 
long, long time, Giolitti had been the strong politician of 
Italy. Three times premier by general election of the 
people, he remained between terms the quiet power — a 
kind of Latin Mark Hanna. We shall never understand 
the affairs of the purely Latin countries if we imagine that 
their legislative bodies, like ours, are divided into a real 
party system. Parties there are, but usually imper- 
manent ones. The true line-up is a matter of personal 
following. 

Giolitti had the strongest following in Italy. In all 
fairness it is no discredit to Giolitti that his connections 
were strongly German. After all, Germany was the 

119 



head of the Alliance by which Italy had kept peace for 
thirty years; to many Italians who hated Austria she 
seemed a benevolent big sister, her hands full of gifts. 
Giolitti was against intervention. He pointed out, in a 
pronouncement which maddened the interventionists, 
that Italy could get nearly as much by trading with 
Austria on her neutrality as she could by entering the war. 

All over Italy the interventionists rose and began to 
riot. Salandra, the premier, who occupied office in the 
beginning by suffer nee of Giolitti, and Sonnino, the able 
minister for foreign affairs, had already gone over to the 
war party. The time for the decision in the Chamber of 
Deputies approached, and the students raged through 
Rome calling for the new war of liberation. To the last 
moment, I am told, the German ambassador sat back 
happy and contented, sure of a favorable vote. But the 
popular enthusiasm swept the deputies into the war 
party, and Italy solemnly ranged herself with the forces 
of democracy. Out of affairs for the time, Giolitti re- 
turned to Turin. 

It was a complex affair, even more complex than I 
have here conveyed; but the mainspring of the Italian 
uprising was the burning desire for freedom, the sym- 
pathy with democracy, inherited by Italy from Garibaldi, 
from Mazzini, from Cavour, from all her giants of the 
fighting sixties. Only secondary was the desire to rescue 
her brothers of the Irredenta and, in rescuing them, to 
close the doors that menaced Italy. 

We think of the Latin nature as suspicious; and in so 
thinking we only half-judge it. Suspicious on one side 
of his mind the real Latin is; on another he is as trusting 
as a child. For he is, above all, human, and has human 
tolerances and allowances for the failings or misfortunes 
of other people. So, with their eyes on their old major 
enemy, Austria, they went on neglecting to watch the 
real villain of the piece. Though they broke diplomatic 
relations with Germany, it was a year before they de- 
clared war. In that period most of the transplanted 

120 



Germans went about their affairs, only carelessly watched. 
Even after the declaration of war with Germany, the 
measures of repression were neither stern enough nor 
thorough enough. 

Further, small elements — if not actually disloyal, at 
least hostile to the war — continued to flourish. On one 
side were certain members of the Clerical parties, always 
at outs — owing to the old seizure of the Papal States — 
with United Italy. On the other extreme — and here 
extremes met — were the majority Socialists — the official 
party. The dissenting Socialist groups had indorsed the 
war. These majority Socialists have only a block of 
forty or fifty votes in a chamber of five hundred members. 
They are, however, able parliamentarians, and cohesive 
— the only group, really, in the Italian Parliament that 
holds caucuses and can be depended upon to vote en bloc. 

As the war goes on and Socialism fails as a party, 
though it succeeds as a principle, one begins to perceive 
two main currents of Socialist thought, which I may call 
the doctrinaire and the liberal. Socialism, in the begin- 
ning, was a great democratic movement toward human 
freedom, in thorough sympathy with such uprisings for 
political liberty as the successful American, French and 
Italian revolutions, and the abortive German revolution 
of 1848. 

In Germany, its birthplace, the gradual corruption of a 
once admirable race has largely turned it into a machine 
doctrine of economics; the original object, which was 
wider human liberty and the greatest good to the greatest 
number, has become lost in the machinery. The system 
— whatever its results — is the end of the majority German 
Socialist. From the beginning of the war we have seen 
German Socialism used by the oppressors of Germany as 
a tool against the corresponding class in enemy and 
neutral countries. It is being so used at this moment in 
our own country. I, who say this, profess myself a Social- 
ist in theory. On the other hand, the liberal Socialism of 
France and Germany looks beyond the machine to its 
great object of wider human happiness. 

121 



Unfortunately the Socialism of Italy, at least in the 
majority party, had risen and flourished under German 
tutelage, and held the machine more dear than the prod- 
uct. Especially these Italian majority Socialists adhered 
to the narrower tenet of internationalism with peace — 
the doctrine their German tutors had rejected on the first 
day of the great war. 

The German Socialist majority has made its admirers 
and associates in enemy countries dance to the time of a 
very tragic comedy during the past two years. Re- 
pudiating, themselves, any idea of peace save a trium- 
phant German peace, they have at the same time cajoled 
their dupes into struggling for peace in the abstract at 
the very moments when peace would most advantage 
autocratic Germany. 

THE ADVANCE ON THE CARSO 

Let me merely sketch the events of the next two years : 
The Italian Army proved so good as to astonish even its 
admirers. One by one it got the keys of the main doors 
to Italy. In a series of movements, notable alike for 
valor and for clever strategy, the Italians forced their 
way to the Carso and the lower Alps, and, in eleven des- 
perate and ever-victorious battles, battered across them. 
The fine attack of last August gave them the Bainsizza 
Plateau and the important height of Monto Santo. Only 
one great barrier remained — Monte San Gabriele. Take 
that and the Italians would have an open road to Laibach 
and eventually to Vienna. 

In spite of a few cabinet changes, the country behind 
the army held with all necessary firmness. Through the 
energy and capacity of her able northern engineers Italy 
made up for her shortage of coal and turned out the 
munitions. Like all the other Western Allies, she bungled 
the food problem in the beginning. In 1916, owing to a 
too-low maximum price, the acreage planted in winter 
wheat was comparatively small. On top of that came a 
bad, dry year. She found herself in food difficulties, 

122 



though not insuperable ones. On the whole, prospects 
last summer seemed rosy. There were those who be- 
lieved that we should have Our decision on the Austrian- 
Italian Front. 

Now let us turn to Germany: Her diplomats, last sum- 
mer, spent half of their energy in getting a firm grip on the 
Austrians, who, weary of the war, were trying their best 
to wriggle out. From the beginning of the war the Ger- 
mans recognized, as the prouder and less practical Allied 
nations did not, the value of propaganda for persuading 
the neutrals and for weakening enemies. That propa- 
ganda, as we all know, was very awkward in the begin- 
ning; it tried to attack the Anglo-Saxon and Latin mind 
by the methods effective with the peculiar German mind. 

In the first three or four months of the war every time 
he opened his mouth the servile German savant, mobil- 
ized to persuade the inferior peoples, gave something 
away or merely raised a laugh. But the Germans, with 
their cool adaptation of the means to the end, changed 
their tune. I imagine that, just as they mobilized their 
expert chemists to make poison gases to destroy the body, 
they mobilized, also, their advertising experts, their 
psychologists, their best journalists, perhaps even their 
novelists and dramatists, to make noxious vapors against 
the mind. For their propaganda, as time went on, grew 
amazingly clever in its adaptation to circumstances and 
to the various kinds of minds at which it was directed. 

There is one propaganda for Spain; in America such a 
campaign would fall flat, but it exactly suits the peculiar 
Spanish psychology; there is another for Switzerland; and 
there is still another for America. But various as the 
methods are, I have felt all this year, as I studied the 
German camouflage in the European countries, a sense 
of general strategic plan under one clever head or group 
of heads. Everywhere, for example, they have been 
trying to instill the idea of peace: "It is coming; it is 
inevitable; to fight longer is foolish for all sides; the 
Germans desire it as much as anyone else." 

123 



THE J»AN-GERMANIST*S COO 

I thought, last summer, that this was because Ger- 
many wanted to settle up the war before she found her- 
self in a deeper hole. I am not so sure now but that it 
was part of a general plan to weaken the Allies by im- 
planting so strongly the hope of peace as to relax the spirit 
and resistance of peoples. 

Germany's generation of steady preparation for her 
burst toward empire had given her exceptional machinery 
to get at the minds of her enemies. She had an increas- 
ing people. It was a cardinal principle of the autocrats 
who were steering her destinies to make the German 
people breed like rabbits, so some day the heads of the 
empire would make an excuse for world conquest by 
saying: "We are overpopulated; it is just that we should 
ask for room." 

Also they were able, through their tight grip over their 
docile subjects, to plant their immigrants at the strategic 
points where the empire needed them. When imperial 
policy felt that there were enough Germans in the United 
States the sluice gates somehow marvelously closed and 
the stream flowed elsewhere. Under this policy Ger- 
mans, so long resident that they escaped the notice of the 
resident populations, were dropped in every corner of 
France, Belgium, Italy and England. 

German character, as formed under the perverted 
system of moral education founded by Bismarck and 
her other empire builders, adapted itself wonderfully to 
the deeper purposes of this planting process. The aver- 
age Englishman, Frenchman or American would not like 
to go among a foreign people with the long set purpose of 
betraying his neighbors. No reluctance of this kind 
handicaps the German. The school of ethics in which 
he was educated — the devil religion of modern Germany 
— holds that the supreme duty of man is toward the state. 
And this god of blood and iron requires only one morality 
of its worshiper — to serve the glory of the state, though 

124 



every person therein be poorer, more degraded, less 
happy because of that service. 

And no moral command of Christianity, or any other 
religion, must stand between the pan-Germanist and his 
god. For if men must give their souls, if need be, women 
must give their bodies. That policy of implantation, 
that education in the sanctity of duplicity, accounts for 
the success of the German spy system, both before this 
war began and since; and it also accounts for the ma- 
chinery of propaganda, by which the psychological board 
in Berlin gets at the mind of the enemy. 

So, in the autumn, the time came when the Germans 
decided to take charge of the Austrians and eliminate the 
danger from Italy. The job must have looked like a 
hard one; the Italian Army occupied an exceptionally 
good terrain for defense, and it was excellent in organiza- 
tion, in human material, in intelligent direction. The 
Germans, therefore, tried on it a new method. As an 
American politician who watched the events of October 
in Italy expressed it to me: "They didn't shoot bullets; 
they shot psychology." 

When, ten days before the disaster, I visited the Italian 
Front, I noted a tendency of thought that puzzled me at 
the time, though it is all plain to me now. Officers and 
privates would say to me: "Well, I'll see you in Paris at 
Christmas;" or, "I'll be back to my job in America next 
winter." "How?" I would ask. "The war will be 
over in December," they would say; "it's all arranged." 
Many added: "The peace conference is meeting secretly 
in Switzerland." 

In certain parts of the army this seemed a fixed idea. 
Of course, I believe now, this insidious idea came from 
Germanic sources. It was demoniacally clever. An 
army which believes that the war is settled, over, all 
arranged, is not going to put the best it has into a fight. 

This was general propaganda, a gas cloud. But, as in 
any intelligent preliminary bombardment, the enemy 
concentrated on the point where it intended to break 

125 



through. This point was not one of the great natural 
gateways to Italy. Its situation and the lay of the land 
made it easily defensible; and behind it were reserve 
positions even more secure. It was not the kind of sector 
that gives much concern to a general who expects a great 
attack. Doubtless it was picked for that reason. There, 
quietly, subtly, the enemy began its psychological drive. 
The full particulars I do not know — only scattered details. 

The Pope's peace note appeared last August. Agents 
of the enemy, reading into it meanings the Vatican 
doubtless never intended, talked to the faithful Italian 
peasants, with their religious feeling and their narrow 
mental horizon. "Why do you fight?" they said. "Don't 
you know the Holy Father wills peace?" The Socialist 
or pretended Socialist agents approached their own kind, 
telling them that the workingmen of Austria and Ger- 
many wanted peace; that all were ready to lay down their 
arms together. 

They harped on the illusion that England and France — 
especially England — were keeping up this war in order to 
get a grip on Italy. Austrian deserters, loaded with instruc- 
tions before they deserted, assisted in the plot. They 
came over declaring that the comrades on the other side 
of the trench line wanted peace; that at the first move- 
ment of an attack they would throw down their arms and 
greet the Italians as brothers. Aeroplanes dropped 
pamphlets emphasizing all these points. 

BY TRICK AND STRATEGY 

Newspapers came very irregularly to these mountain 
passes. Suddenly, all along the Front, someone distri- 
buted copes of fake Roman and provincial newspapers, so 
made up and printed that they looked like the real thing, 
even to the advertisements and the local items. They 
carried on their front pages the news of a starving Italy, 
and of bread riots in their own home towns, which had 
been put down, with heavy slaughter of women and 
children, by French and British troops! I need not say 
that all this was false. 

126 



By now an attack, for some time expected by the 
Italians, was on — or, rather, the preliminary bombard- 
ments and shifting curtain fires of such an attack. It 
seemed to be strongest near Tolmino, one of the dangerous 
gateways to Italy; and the picked troops there were 
standing beautifully. It was known, also, that several 
German divisions were stiffening the Austrians. The 
battle grew to a semblance of a real attack by October 23, 
on which day, as I myself can witness, the shelling of back 
lines was violent, even so far as Monfalcone, on the sea. 

Then, on October 24, picked German troops, the best 
she had, hurled themselves against the bodies of Italians 
on whom Germany had turned the preliminary bombard- 
ment of propaganda. 

What happened we shall not know until the story of this 
war is painstakingly pieced together from reports and 
memoirs. In substance this body of troops opened up and 
let the enemy through. Confused details have pierced 
the mists that lie over a disaster of the kind. Whole 
companies rose from the trenches and, in spite of their 
frantic officers, rushed, with outstretched hands, to greet 
their advancing " brothers," who passed them without a 
word and charged on toward the reserve lines. 

The thing seems to have been wonderfully stage- 
managed. Before the advancing troops, I understand, 
scurried Austrians from the Irredentia who spoke 
perfect Italian, and who were costumed as Italian staff 
officers. Rushing into the gun emplacements and reserve 
trenches, they shouted orders for an instant retirement: 
Sauve qui pent! The reserves, in turn, opened up and 
let the Germans through. Almost unopposed, they poured 
into the valley of the Upper Isonzo; with rifles, with 
machine guns, with field artillery they took in the rear 
the left wing of that valiant Second Army which had, in 
August, taken so heroically the Bainsizza Plateau and 
Monte Santo. 

Tangled up in mountains higher and more precipitous 
than the Catskills, to which they had hauled their guns by 

127 



days and weeks of painful labor, what could they do? 
The left wing of the Second Army was virtually lost. The 
right wing was saved by the bersaglieri, those valiant 
marching troops who wear the broad sombrero and the 
burst of cock's plumes. Charging again and again into 
annihilation, but never ceasing to charge while they lived, 
they held back the tide until the right wing could roll 
back on Cividale and the plain. All that Italy had bat- 
tered out of Austria in two years became untenable. 

PROPAGANDA IN AMERICA 

The Third Army, holding along the Carso from Gorizia 
to the sea, was saved, with most of its guns, by an action 
of cavalry as heroic as the charge of the bersaglieri. Before 
an orderly battle line could be restored, much more, 
including the Venetian Plain to the Tagliamento, became 
untenable, in its turn. And all this was not because of 
better or bigger forces or superior military strategy, but 
because of a subtle propaganda, applied to just one little 
sector of one of the best armies in this whole desperate 
game! 

Well, it pulled Italy together; it had that minor advan- 
tage. And the German propaganda failed, I think, of its 
final objective. The Germans never intended that it 
should stop where it did. They expected, rather, to 
undermine the moral force of the whole nation — to make 
Italy a Russia. They showed that by their procedure in 
the days following the victory. Some of the first pris- 
oners they took were filled up and turned loose. "We 
don't want you," they said to these men; "the war is 
over. Go home and tell your people that if they don't 
fight us any more they may have their country back, just 
as it was! We have come to rescue you from England 
and France." 

No sooner had the enemy cavalry occupied Udine, for- 
merly the Italian headquarters city, and hoisted its 
standard on the citadel, than the newly established 
German governor issued a proclamation to the same effect. 

128 



It was the Italian version of the peace-without-annexa- 
tions-and-indemnities lie used with such effect against 
Russia. 

But the board of psychology failed, as Germans usually 
fail, to read the alien mind to the bottom. It did not 
know — for it had fooled itself — that the true heart of 
Italy was in this war. It did not count on pride, that 
governing motive with the Latin. It did not understand 
that free men, on their own invaded soil, will fight like 
tigers. 

The board of propaganda is shooting psychology at us 
also; I know that, though I am in touch with my own 
country now only by means of the newspapers. And the 
ammunition, I perceive, is the same. Indeed, some of 
that brand was fired at me last summer by camouflaged 
German propagandists in Switzerland: Why fight? Let 
us have peace! England, the villain, is keeping up this 
war in order to strangle us! The war is almost over, 
anyway — why fight? 

As in Italy, the Germans need only light the torch and 
hand it on. Well-intentioned people, quite honest, quite 
untreasonable, will carry it for them. In the newspapers 
appear now and then the names of some of my own 
friends, above suspicion of dishonesty — financial or intel- 
lectual — who are helping, with all the sincerity of high 
purpose, in this German game. 

Besides which, German propagandists are probably 
walking our streets by thousands, keeping within the 
letter of the law, but spreading, without hindrance, the 
ideas engendered in Berlin. 



129 



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